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A child
of hippies and a Southern California native my entire life,
I spent most of my summers glued to a boogie board in the
surf of Redondo Beach. I attended Redondo Union High School,
and in 1986, I entered the University
of California San Diego to study pre-med. After doing
horribly in Organic Chemistry three semesters in a row,
I embraced my love of writing, reconsidered my career choice,
and changed my major to Literature with an emphasis in Writing.
Eventually, I received my B.A. in 1991. While a student
at UCSD, I also had many fabulous athletic experiences.
I was a member of the National Champion Women's Volleyball
team, a two-time National Champion in the Shot Put and Discus,
and a seven-time Track & Field All American. As far
as I know, I am still the record holder in the Shot Put
and Discus events. Off the field, I was an Athletes' Council
representative and one of the student chairs of the campus-wide
committee charged with the design and development of a $35,000,000
Recreation
Intramural Athletic Complex (RIMAC) facility.
After graduating
from UCSD, I began the Graduate Program in English/Composition
& Rhetoric at CSU
Dominguez Hills and began tutoring at El
Camino College. After writing my thesis titled "Call
Me Coach: Applications for Coaching Within the Teaching
of Remedial Composition," I completed my M.A. in 1995
and swiftly made the transition from tutor to instructor.
From there, I began teaching composition courses at several
local community colleges, including El Camino College, Golden
West College, LA
City College, and here at Long Beach City College. During
Fall 2000, I was fortunate enough to also be hired to teach
Freshman English at Loyola
Marymount University, which expanded my total course
load to five sections of three different classes at three
different college campuses. After all those years of crazy
part-time teaching and coaching, I gratefully accepted a
full-time position here at LBCC in 2001.
For eleven years,
I have established balance between my academic and athletic
lives as the Throwing Events Coach for the Track & Field
teams at several local high schools and spent the last five
of those years coaching the javelin, shot put, and discus
at El Camino. Seeking to simplify my life and become more
involved in the LBCC community, I happily retired from coaching
in 2002.
Throughout my
years of teaching, I have been devoted to improving myself
as a teacher as well as improving the content of the courses
I teach. I have experimented with several textbooks and
found a selection that compliments my teaching style and
encourages the growth of my students. I find myself drawn
to the developmental courses, but have taught just about
every other class in a variety of traditional and innovative
settings, including, nine-week courses, summer school courses,
the S.T.A.R. Basic Skills Learning Community, and the Puente
Program here at LBCC. My next challenge will be to develop
a hybrid English 105 class that will meet one day a week
in the classroom and one day a week online.
What I have realized through all of this is that there are
very few experiences in this world that fulfill me or bring
me as much joy as when I am teaching students to write.
In each of the courses I teach, I combine a review of grammar
relevant to composition with journal writings. I utilize
a balance of personal, persuasive, and analytical essays
and a selection of multi-cultural-based readings as basis
for discussing the components of excellent writing. One
of the most relevant aspects of the way I approach teaching
all of my classes is that I see my role as being of service
to the students. My students know that I believe writing
is a challenging process that is necessary but can be enjoyable.
They know that, as a continually developing writer myself,
I love every aspect of writing from the way the ink soaks
into the paper to the way an idea wraps itself in words,
from struggling to find just the right word to express a
precious idea, to the way a document is formatted on the
computer screen. As a community of writers, my students
and I are bonded in our continuing journey. As any of my
former students would confirm, I am willing to do almost
anything to assist the discovery and development of their
own process of expression. In addition, I bring to the classroom
a first-hand enthusiasm for the personal computer and its
limitless potential to assist their writing. I am also a
wanna-be hacker who surfs the Internet and accepts essays
via e-mail.
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