Vocabulary Enrichment

25 Years teaching Special Education for students with moderate to severe disabilities. I have taught programs in self-contained classrooms at the elementary, middle, high school levels as well as post secondary for students aged 18-22. I retired in 2019, but have continued substitute teaching. I have also continued to work with California Department of Education in the development of the California Alternate Assessment and English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (ELPAC) I have presented multiple workshops at the California Teacher Association's Good Teaching Conference. The topics dealt with differentiation of Math and ELA instruction to promote inclusion of students with disabilities into general education.

Whole group, small group and 1:1 instruction. I am a strong advocate of student centered approaches targeting the presentation of lessons, and methods to enhance student attention and engagement.

Riverside COE Teacher of the year 2003 Riverside COE Extraordinary Service Award 2012-13

B.S. Business Administration/Accounting. Graduated summa cum laude, San Francisco State University, 1992. B.A. Education/Special Education Option, California State University, San Bernardino, 2005. B.S. Education, Brain-Based Teaching and Learning, Nova Southeastern University, 2011.

In early 2012, I became very interested in using brain-based approaches to my teaching, and especially as it pertained to reading acquisition and development. Going far beyond simple sight-word recognition, I developed materials and strategies for teaching phonics and decoding skills as well as general reading vocabulary development to students with intellectual disabilities. It was from those efforts and experiences that I got the idea in 2022 for developing a Mini-stories Vocabulary Enrichment Program.