It is an honor to be the administrator of such an outstanding school as Classical School.   My involvement with the school began in 1998 when I served on its founding Board of Directors; however, I have worn several other hats since then as a teacher, program support specialist, and now the school's administrator.  Through these various roles, I have helped with the development and implementation of the school's mission, curriculum, and philosophy.  Our goal has been to provide a just and excellent educational foundation for our students and it has been a privilege to pursue this endeavor with the CCSA board of directors, the teachers and staff, and the wonderful parents of the school.

Classical School has certainly played an important role in my family's life.  My husband, Shawn, is a high school Spanish teacher now, but he was initially one of the founding board members of Classical and taught at the school for its first five years.  Shawn and I have two daughters, one of whom is a high school senior and a graduate of Classical School.  She still carries her classical education with her in her current level of study, as well as continuing with the strong study and organizational skills that her teachers taught her during her five-year tenure at Classical.  Our older daughter has chosen a career in education and taught at Classical School for four years.   I wish both of my daughters would have had the opportunity to attend Classical School from kindergarten and certainly many times Shawn and I have wished that we too  would have had the opportunity to attend a school like Classical School when we were growing up.  I marvel at the content our students are being taught at an early age and realize that this curriculum would have made my own travels toward cultural literacy much more expedient and most certainly would have provided a foundation of study that I didn’t receive until much later in life.  My favorite subjects when I was in school were English and math because I loved the patterns that existed in the language of both of these subjects and the level of analysis and abstract thought they offered.

For most of my life, I have been a voracious reader and I have realized that I never feel fully comfortable in a room unless it has books – the more books in the room, the more at home I feel.  As a child I used to feel a sense of urgency that I wouldn’t be able to read all of the books I wanted to read during my lifetime.  As an adult, I still find that the list of books I want to read outnumbers my time available, but with age I have discovered that part of life’s joy as a reader is in the journey itself and in never fully completing one’s reading list.  I enjoy the works of so many authors that it is difficult to pick one or two favorites, but some of the authors whose works I have enjoyed the most include James Joyce, Jane Austen, William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, William Shakespeare, and Miguel Cervantes.  If I could only pick one favorite book, it would probably be Don Quixote. I have a strong interest in visual art as well as literature, having majored in art history at Lawrence University. Surrounding myself with art that I love is as important to me as living among books that I love.  My family and I also enjoy traveling when we can and world languages play a big role in our family.  I have studied French, Spanish, and Latin, but I clearly am not as linguistically inclined as the rest of my family; nonetheless, I am slowly working on my language skills and have a goal of one day being able to speak another language fluently.

Perhaps my strongest interest in life is that of education.  I am a advocate for curriculum reform and value the specific, solid, shared, and sequenced curriculum that Core Knowledge offers.  I appreciate the balance that Classical School provides its students by fostering freedom of expression, independent thinking,  and creative and aesthetic development with the rigor of its rich content.  The students at Classical demonstrate a true joy for learning and specifically for their topics of study.  Clearly, the best part of my day is being able to spend time with 450 unique students and in the pleasure I derive in serving and guiding them along their academic and personal paths.  We all know, of course, that a school such as ours cannot be successful without the dedication of its staff members to the school's mission. Many charter schools suffer from a high turnover of staff, but at Classical School, our staff attrition rate is very low, and in fact, a number of our teachers express a desire to stay at Classical for the duration of their careers in education.  My respect and appreciation for our staff is very deep and I know how much they believe in our program, what great advocates they are for our curriculum, and how much they enjoy their fellow staff members as well as their students and the parents with whom they work.   That kind of dedication is invaluable to the success of our school.

I have equal respect for our parents who are highly involved in their children's education and who, in many cases, must make a concerted effort each day to bring their children to school in a location further away than their neighborhood school.  I appreciate the importance that school choice plays in their lives and the value they have placed upon it by sending their children to a Core Knowledge school for a solid, traditional educational foundation.  Being the administrator of Classical School makes coming to work each day a great pleasure, and I never underestimate the important work of educating children and molding young minds to prepare them for the next levels of their studies and lives.