Essays + Narratives

In 2004, I signed up for the Susan G. Komen Three Day, a 60 mile Walk for Breast Cancer, promoted as “the greatest distance you can go in the fight against breast cancer.” Participants raise $2500, and then, over a period of three days, walk approximately 20 miles a day. We camped at night in […]

This poem is a collaboration with my fellow teachers. We all share a passion for educating young people, and we also care deeply for our students. I asked teachers to send me something they were not told by their formal education professors about teaching. Their responses are in quotations.  What they don’t tell you before […]

“I bet there are some skeletons in that closet!”  Jenny is standing in my kitchen, and I laugh as I say this to her. I don’t get to see my sister often because I live in South Korea, where my husband is stationed, and she lives in Northern California. But right now, we’re together in […]

Storytelling is in my blood. As a small child, I would lay my head in my grandmother’s lap, listening to her weave tales of imaginary creatures from far and wide, soothing my unsettled brain to sleep. In elementary school, we would spend hours playing pretend and inventing worlds together: I was the teacher, she was […]