Research is to teaching like sin is to confession; without one, you have nothing to say in the other.

Professor Allen, Economics professor, U.C.L.A.

Teaching has been a life-long learning curve for me. I became interested in teaching when I was twelve years after I had the opportunity to work with my step-mother as a summer school aid. She was an inspiring and dedicated first grade teacher who changed the lives of the children lucky enough to have her as their teacher. After earning my BA in history at U.C. Riverside in 1976, I attended U.C.L.A. for my teaching degree. As a student, I taught reading to inmates in prison, and I also taught Jane Fonda’s child at an alternative school in Santa Monica, California.

For the next several years, I taught at Catholic schools in Los Angeles. I introduced several new courses, including the first A.P. course at Our Lady of Loretto where I moderated yearbook for five years. I also taught at an Orthodox Jewish yeshiva where I was mentored by a truly fine principal. I was deeply enriched by a different culture and outlook from my Catholic faith and traditions.

I returned to graduate school in 1984, and spent the next three years earning a master’s in theology at Fuller Theological Seminary focused on Christian approaches to the Holocaust, and I took another year to study patristic theology at Claremont. 

In 1990, my family and I moved to Warri, Nigeria, and I spent the next eight years as the only expatriate teacher in an all-girls school with 3000 young women. My four classes had sixty students each…and they all turned in every scrap of work, so I had lots of papers to grade! Again, I was exposed to totally new cultures, and I had to master the British “O Level” curriculum and study the various tribal groups that comprised the uneasy population of my school. I later moved to Oman in the Middle East, and taught English language classes to students from a dozen different Arab and East African countries.

Returning home and relocating to North Carolina in 2000, I served as a Guardian ad Litem for five years. As a GAL, I served as the court-appointed ‘advocate’ for children suffering abuse and neglect or experiencing the trauma of high conflict divorce. I returned to the classroom in 2007, and taught for KIPP Pride High, an innovative charter school program serving the African American community in rural North Carolina. I taught several A.P. classes and my students earned top scores on their state exams while earning entrance into college, most often as the first person in their family to gain acceptance to a four year university program.

During the summer of 2014, I served as an English teacher at a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon during the latest conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people in Gaza. I learned a great deal about this tragic conflict, and the real discrimination and lack of opportunity these children have as refugees in Lebanon

I have been honored as teacher of the year at various high schools, and Our Lady Secondary School in Warri, Nigeria dedicated a day to celebrate my teaching career. Most recently, I was chosen to be one of four teachers to be recognized by Pride High’s class of 2012. In addition, I won a volunteer of the year award from Chapel Hill, North Carolina in recognition of my work as a GAL. I have edited four theological books and continue to take classes and workshops in English literature and on educational topics.

I am thrilled and delighted to be at Salpointe Catholic School, with its rich traditions, outstanding educational staff, and wide community support. I look forward to teaching my students, meeting their parents, and advising my wonderful newspaper and yearbook staffs!