I am currently teaching Reading and English at a public school in Florida.
After earning my BA in English/English Education from FSU in 1990 I went on to earn my MA in English from the University of Mississippi in 1992. My master's thesis was an analysis of the language in a series of Civil War letters that my great-great-great-great grandfather (who only had around an 8th grade education) wrote to his wife while on Sherman's March. Tragically, he was killed in one of the very last battles of the war and the packet of letters his wife had written to him was forever lost.
After subbing and waiting tables for a few years, I finally got a teaching job! I taught English at Estero High School from 1996-1999 and then moved back to Tallahassee, where I taught English and reading at Rickards High School while working on my Ph.D. in Reading. My dissertation was a quantitative study of opportunity to learn in and across four high schools in Florida.
I taught at the University of Tennessee from 2002-2005, at the University of Alabama from 2005-2011, and at FSU from 2011 to 2013.
