Bilingualism in English and German was a gift my parents gave me. Seventeen years later, Spanish was a gift Guatemala gave me when I went to live there for a year after graduating college. And Arabic was a gift I gave myself, through lots of hard work.

I majored in Political Science and took classes in Spanish, German, and Arabic at Middlebury College. After college, I moved to the Middle East, where I taught English for three years at the Ramallah Friends School in Palestine. I earned my Masters of Arts in Teaching from the University of Pittsburgh and a full-year internship prepared me for teaching in our public school system. I taught Spanish and World Languages at Tyrone Area High School for the past three years.