I had wanted to be a teacher since having Mrs. Simard in second grade. Life, and family circumstances along with a gift for accounting discovered in high school took me on a totally different path. Once settled into married life and motherhood, I decided at age 30 to take the leap – starting my undergraduate program with a toddler and infant. Seven years later, I completed my degree and never looked back.

My first year of teaching was also the same time that Maine created the MLTI program of one-to-one computing for every seventh grader. Trial by fire, I jumped in to teach grades seven and eight at a rural K-8 school. While the seventh graders were over the moon with the new technology, the eighth graders were not. It was a tough first year (parallel experience: student teaching, solo teaching), nearly ending my career before it began.

While finishing up my degree, I had worked at a private high school for winter sports (think Olympics!) and just for fun I created learning opportunities of using the latest greatest technology from CGI to analyze the form while racing (GS) and tricks (half pipe) to video production, website development, photo editing and animation. My local school district took notice. In 2003, they created a grades 9-12 Computer Technology curriculum so tailored to my classes that I was really the only candidate in Franklin County, earned both my Technology Education and Gifted & Talented Education certifications. Then, in 2009, I was asked to return to school: San Jose’s State University for my MLIS.

Over the summers of 2013-2016, I created and operated Reading Rescue: a grassroots effort to provide gently loved books to children in north Franklin County, visiting them at their recreation programs. That fall, our family decided to move back toward southern Maine and within days I found the perfect role: K-5 Library Media Specialist (I have never liked this label, as we do so much more!) with a strong community of support and hundreds of littles. The following year, they added a full-time Technology Ed Tech who also supports the library half-time.

Covid-19 has changed a lot of things, and the strong community is still there, but has been invaded with some pretty hateful efforts from an extremely loud few.

In the spring of 2022, I became the K-5 Lead Librarian (three K-5 schools in our community), which is right around the time I found Future Ready Librarians and new growth has begun. I look forward to all that I can learn, and share with my two amazing K-5 colleagues within their own libraries/buildings, as well as for my school community and our district. I am now the most senior of the five of us , in a community of 500 educators. Five: a group that is “small but mighty!” (what I am working toward)