About

Hello! Welcome to my résumé blog. This site highlights my professional experiences, educational background, work with technology and my explorations in the field of education, with a focus on early childhood and international education. You’ll find me blogging about different tech tools I’m exploring, new ideas I’m learning, and events and discussions that I want to share.

I’m currently working as a Lower School Technology Coordinator at an independent school outside of Philadelphia. I help teachers and students in PreK-2nd grade integrate technology into the classroom and explore ways to use technology as a tool for global collaboration, communication, and creation. When I’m not at school, I also work as a Technology and Education Consultant for clients like Engagement Strategies, LLC supporting webinars on social media and early childhood education; crafting client emails; managing numerous social media accounts; designing and conducting trainings on web 2.o tools and social media; and designing and maintaining company websites. I also have experience using wikis and other web 2.0 tools to create virtual communities of practice and enable global collaboration among multi-agency groups internationally. My master’s degree is in International Training and Education and as a merit student at American University I created social media networks for our program on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to increase recruitment and networking opportunities for current students and alumni. When I’m not busy with working on my computer, you can probably find me taking photographs.

I have been passionate about early childhood education for many years, which is one of the reasons I studied abroad in Reggio Emilia, Italy as an undergraduate. The Reggio Emilia philosophy of early care and education inspires a lot of the work I do in early childhood education and influences my own philosophy as a teacher and trainer.

After living and studying abroad, I developed a deep interest in international education and the opportunity to learn from different cultures about educational approaches. Later, in my master’s program in International Training and Education, I gained a greater understanding of the theory and practice behind international education as well as strategies for cross-cultural training and non-formal education.

Additionally, I am an avid technology user and am continuously exploring new tech tools both professionally and personally in order to examine how they can be applied in educational contexts in ways that are pedagogically meaningful. I believe technology can be used as a great resource and tool to connect educators and organizations around the globe, allowing for increased collaboration and cross-cultural exchange. Over the past few years, I have also worked increasingly with social media and other digital networking tools to build a Personal Learning Network and to market different programs and organizations online.

Prior to working as a Technology and Education Consultant, I worked at Teaching Strategies, Inc., an early childhood curriculum and assessment company, as an Implementation Coordinator. At Bryn Mawr College, I took on a number of positions, ranging from Educational Technology Consultant to Computing Coordinator, where I designed new, adult education classes on technology for campus staff members and worked with the teachers of those classes to support their lesson planning.

Many different theorists, as well as personal experiences, have influenced who I am as a teacher and trainer. In particular, my time in Reggio Emilia, Italy and the work of Loris Malaguzzi, inform my view of early childhood education and early childhood environments and I have also been inspired by Margie Carter and Deb Curtis. Additionally, I pull on the work of Dewey, Freire, Vygotsky, Montessori, and Piaget as some foundational theories from which I piece together my own teaching philosophy.

As a trainer, I have been particularly influenced by Jane Vella and her book, Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach: The Power of Dialogue in Educating Adults. I believe deeply in the importance of active participation and the twelve principles Vella discusses (e.g., making a training relevant, sequential, active, dialogical, praxis-based). In designing a training, I typically follow a Training Cycle that involves: defining a vision, conducting a needs assessment, planning the training, facilitating the training, and monitoring, and evaluation, which then feeds back into the vision of the training.

Click here to download my résumé (.pdf).