“I grew up in Cuyahoga Falls and Green. I went to church and decided to follow Jesus when I was in middle school and high school. His faithfulness has been the foundation of my adult life. I went to Kent State and graduated with a degree in Spanish. I knew about Urban Vision and North Hill through my church being connected to UV, so I had volunteered at Kids' Club a bit in college. The diversity, teaching English, and getting to speak Spanish, made me feel like a world traveler without having to do any of the traveling. Experiencing a lot of different cultures and perspectives is important to me; so of course, I came to love North Hill. 

My husband grew up in North Hill. He was interning at UV when we got engaged, and so there was no question when we got married that this would be our home. Since I had gotten a certificate in Teaching English as Foreign Language in college alongside my Spanish degree, it wasn’t long until I was teaching English in the Beacon Learning Center “school” at Urban Vision. It was the perfect fit.  

North Hill life has been great! My husband and I have a super cute son and daughter, we constantly have too many side hustles and projects in the works, we love spending time outside, and I love knowing so many of my neighbors. Whether they're staff or students who have been at UV, I feel like I know somebody on every street 😅 At an 8 week leadership retreat in college where we all lived in condos and worked random jobs close by and did missions-type projects together, they said "you'll never have this experience again of living and working right around the corner from so many friends and people you go to church with and do ministry with" - but turns out, that's my real life and I love it. 

As my time progressed, I had the opportunity to lead our SOS after-school program and now specialize as the Academic Coordinator of SOS. I'm proud of the shift I have made since I started working here. I’ve begun to looking for what physical obstacles might be impeding a student's academic progress. I started out with the typical thinking about learning: all academic problems can be fixed by working hard and good tutoring. Though I still believe these to be necessary ingredients, I’ve come to see that there are many situations that require a different approach. I was seeing the most hardworking students just weren't seeing results in their grades and test scores. Even the ones who "weren't working hard" wanted to but something was blocking them.  

Now I'm proud to be an academics coordinator who digs for what else is going on without just dismissing their struggle as "Well, someone has to be the low end of the bell curve."  As I began to learn and as my family has dealt with our own challenges from neurodiversity every day, I’ve begun to be extra passionate to help connect our students' families with tools that can help them navigate similar challenges! I bug parents about getting eye exams and glasses and occupational therapy services and ADHD evaluations and we're starting to see results in kids I maybe would have written off as hopelessly too hyper or lazy or distracted. I truly believe the mantra from Ross W. Greene that "Kids do well when they can" and it's always worth finding the reason why they can't. And we’ve started to see some of the results of this change! 

God has been so good to me giving me a second home and meaningful work at Urban Vision, and I'm so thankful for the huge infrastructure that allows me to work on my tiny corner of things effectively. You make that possible for me. Thanks“