I am the one who has been in the field of education for 31 years and cannot believe how quickly the time has passed. When I go through boxes of mementos, I realize how easy it was for me to decide on a career path. I "played" school in suburban Chicago with my four siblings. To this day, we laugh at the way I organized our books into a mock library. I also was good at the game of school in real life. I was the perfect, quiet student with her hand raised in the front row: motivated, organized, creative, and thorough. Anything less than straight "As" was unacceptable for me, even at the expense of learning. I wanted to be a teacher when I grew up because correcting papers sounded like fun.

I am the one who attended college in the 1970s, which shaped my interest in open education. I studied abroad in Bristol, England and completed a practicum in an infant school. My senior student teaching was at a magnet school in Evanston, Ill. I remember being completely lost in the world of basal text instruction when I signed a contract the following year in a traditional school in the same district.

I am the one who followed a love interest to Alaska complete with a spring break drive up the Alcan Highway. The intrigue of the last frontier got the better of me, so I left my secure suburban job to teach in the Anchorage School District. Television was two weeks delayed and there were no malls, but the mountains and wildlife helped distract me from the lack of shopping. I found my passion for literacy by getting involved in the National Writing Project, which had just arrived on the education landscape. This led me to complete a master's degree in reading by using my classroom for research. Searching for more adventure, I sought out a yearlong teacher exchange and was awarded an International Teaching Fellowship to Melbourne, Australia. My Aussie counterpart thought he had landed on the moon when he arrived in January to live in my condo and teach my class. I, on the other hand, melted in the 40-degree Celsius heat and enjoyed fifth grade students in school uniforms.

I am the one who, after teaching 14 years in elementary schools and experiencing whole language, new math, and invented spelling, turned to the challenges of middle school. I exchanged handholding-fourth graders for hormone-driven eighth graders. As our junior highs turned into middle schools, I searched for reasons why young adolescents stopped reading and writing for pleasure.

When a new position was created for our nine middle schools that focused on full-time coaching and literacy support, I jumped at the chance. In the last six years, I have become more passionate than ever about middle school education and have published four articles. As a result, I am able to communicate with teachers across the United States and share my resources through a Web site called "Middle Link."

I am the one who you will find hiking and biking the world-class trails of Anchorage with my husband, the director of parks and recreation. As we dodge moose, peek around the bend for bears, and swat mosquitoes, we wonder where our journey will take us next.