I grew up running barefoot across the soccer pitch in Louisville, KY (that’s pronounced Lou-a-vuhl) with perfectly polished toes, chasing butterflies and big ideas behind the lens of a camera. After four fantastic years in Bowling Green, KY learning phrases like ‘fixin’ to’ and raisin’ the hill at Western Kentucky University, I packed my bags, my B.A. in Public Relations, and headed west. I set my roots in Bozeman, MT and have been in the Gallatin Valley ever since. I’m lucky to have landed in a vibrant community surrounded 360° by mountains, with sufficient educational, technology, and transportation infrastructure to support a remote career.
I am a voracious learner who is passionate about changing the opportunity landscape of education. You can read more about #MyWhyEdu on EdSurge, where I serve as a contributing writer. As you’ll read on my LinkedIn, I am an extremely curious person — I have been known to chase the thread of an idea back through the internet, and even through academic literature, to its inception point, just to understand how an idea started.
My curiosity is the key driver in my coaching practice. I utilize the skillsets of active listening and curious questioning to both formally and informally coach those who turn to me to help untangle the problem before them. Looking for a coach? Just want to see more about my coaching practice? Visit creativesynapse.org
I believe that learning happens everywhere, not just inside the physical or virtual walls of a classroom. Our challenge as educators is quantifying the learning that does not happen in front of us. I am a proponent of prior learning assessment and competency-based learning, to accelerate recognition of the knowledge, skills and abilities which were built outside of academia. It all goes back to the saying, “Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. But teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.” In my modification, I live by, “Teach a human to learn and they improve our world over their entire lifetime.”
You’ll often find me wandering the trails of SW Montana, daydreaming of new ways to entice people to keep learning, flanked by my fur babies, my custom homebuilder hubby and two exuberant little ladies, floating down the cold smoke, a rushing river, or stepping onto the soccer pitch – to play or coach. Promptly followed by an ice cold craft beer (but not an IPA)!
For all of the nitty gritty on my credentials, publications, presentations, browse on over to my LinkedIn.
