Born in Seattle, Washington, I grew up on fish hatcheries in the Pacific Northwest: Washington, Alaska, Oregon, California, South Dakota, Montana and Utah.
I know what it’s like to move around as a child, to have to make new friends wherever you go, as well as being left out, feeling isolated, and being teased.
In third grade. I worked to get the kids on the playground to follow the Golden Rule and be nice to each other. I organized a note-passing campaign to get everyone to stand up to Charlie (the bully), and not go along being mean to Theresa anymore. It worked! You could say I’ve been doing that work ever since.
When visiting the United Nations building in New York City, I was taken by their huge Norman Rockwell tile mosaic with the Golden Rule inscribed in the tiles.
After being a stay-at-home mother for 10 years, I went to work as a school counselor. After 6 years at the secondary levels, I moved to Littleton Public Schools as an elementary school counselor for 8 years.
My Columbine Story
On Saturday, April 17th, during my first year at Littleton Public Schools, I attended a Saturday workshop, in Cherry Creek, on Bully-Proofing and Violence Prevention. It happened to be three days before the Columbine High School shootings.
The next morning at staff meeting, I talked to the staff about how to be with the students the day after a tragedy. One teacher asked what we can do to help prevent this with out kids in the future. I offered to teach them what I had learned over the week-end about bullying and violence prevention. I happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right information to help train our school, as well as many other schools, on how to create a positive, healthy school climate with and for kids. It was amazing to see the transformation in the student culture over the years as I continued that work. Kids were empowered to help each other, stand up for each other, and we shifted the balance of peer power and strength from negative behaviors to positive.
Being honored as Colorado School Counselor of the Year in 2001 is one of the things that came out of this work.
