I’ve been a teacher as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories include playing school with my sisters, where of course I was the teacher. As I got a little older, I took on the role of neighborhood tutor and homework help go-to gal. I’m a part of the Xennial generation, otherwise known as the Oregon Trail generation. I was among the first set of teenagers to ever have a computer in their own home. I remember the day we got our first printer. It was a $3,000 (or so my dad claimed) black/white laser printer. It was to only be printed from in emergencies because the ink was nearly as expensive as the printer (or so my dad claimed.) I remember using Microsoft Works to type up practice tests for my neighborhood “students” and sneakily printing them out to make sure my lesson was great. I loved teaching from a very young age and recognized immediately how technology could be used to make me a better teacher.

My first actual teaching job was at a small private school. It was an amazing place to learn and grow and try out new ways of teaching. I had ideas and worked hard to implement them. The first time I ever saw a flip booklet was in my mind. I imagined a neatly folded resource that my students could use to study the parts of an eye. I was determined to make this resource real, so I printed the words and pictures out on a sheet of paper, and using scissors, glue, and a photocopier, I set to work figuring out how to bring my vision to reality. I’ve since seen (and made) hundreds of other flipbooks. I know I didn’t really invent them, but for me, the first flipbook I ever used originated from my imagination. The desire for my students to have it brought it to life. That was just the beginning of my resource creation. Nearly every single day of my teaching career, my students have benefited from resources that I created based on how they learned best, what they liked, and what they needed to be successful.