Built for Teachers,
By Teachers

During my first few years in the classroom, the learning curve felt incredibly steep, and I remember how heavily I relied on my textbook to guide my instruction and decision-making. That experience has stayed with me as I work on California Reveal Math. When I write or edit a series of questions, craft sample responses, or develop “listen-tos” in student thinking, I intentionally put myself back in the shoes of a first-year teacher. I reread each lesson and ask myself this series of questions: Does this sequence of questions show a clear progression of understanding? Does it highlight what is mathematically important and worth responding to? Does it anticipate common misconceptions so they can be addressed in the moment? My goal is to make each lesson feel like a supportive partner—just as my textbook once was for me so that new teachers feel guided, confident, and equipped to respond to student thinking with purpose.

When I started at McGraw Hill, I was assigned to the Grade 4 and 5 Literature Search team for Emerge!. I had been a classroom teacher for 15 years and had worked at a university training future teachers, so I have a broad range of experience teaching reading, evaluating children’s literature, and matching standards to books. I was thrilled to be placed on a team with such an important (and fun!) task.

 While hunting for authentic texts to use in our program, I not only thought about what makes “good literature” and what topics would connect to science and social studies standards, but also about what students are interested in and what makes them excited to read.  We found books and excerpts from novels by authors that I knew my former students loved, such as Jennifer Torres, Paul Fleischman, and Duncan Tonatiuh. I was also able to offer suggestions for texts to be written exclusively for our program based on my teaching experience. For example, a Companion Text called “Classroom Entrepreneurs” is based on an economics project I did with my students, and the idea for a Directed Text titled “The Fur Trade” came from Michigan history lessons I taught. My classroom experience has shown me that books can be a fun gateway to complex topics, so I kept that in mind while searching for texts to meet rigorous science standards. One of the books we excerpted, “Starting from Scratch,” introduces students to physical and chemical changes through cooking! We even made sure to include a recipe from the book that students could try to promote real-life connections to the concepts. I really hope the students and teachers who use Emerge! enjoy the text collections we’ve curated!

As an elementary teacher, one of the most important things to me was growing my students into confident, capable writers. My master's thesis was focused on how to get students to read and write about something and then celebrate that effort. When we began thinking about our Texas Science and Florida Science programs for K–5, I knew this was an opportunity to support students in writing and to provide tools for the teachers to build confident and capable writers. What was born from that was our guided Write About It! features. In each lesson, students are asked to write about their learning in a variety of different formats. Rather than just giving a prompt in the Student Edition, our team created a downloadable, printable graphic organizer that was scaffolded and supported students to understand the prompt, create meaningful sentences or paragraphs, and have a product at the end that showed off what they learned about science through their writing.

Before joining McGraw Hill, I spent years in the high school classroom teaching students across multiple learning levels. Differentiating instruction was a necessity for my students, but I often found myself without the support I needed to do it well. When I moved into leading content design for Summit! and Soar!, I never stopped thinking about how much easier my job would have been with the right tools and supports in place. That experience became the foundation for how I led my team in designing activities that give teachers real choices in how they deliver lessons. By providing flexible approaches that meet learners where they are, we aimed to build self-efficacy for both students and teachers. 

Before this chapter of my career, I spent 14 years in public education as an English language arts and reading teacher, a coach, and eventually an assistant principal. Those years formed me in ways no title or professional development ever could. Education has a way of sanding down the sharp edges of certainty. It teaches you quickly that children are rarely defined by the worst thing they have done or the hardest thing they have survived.

People outside education often measure growth in charts, percentages, and color-coded reports. Educators know growth can look far different than that. Sometimes it is the first fragile glimpse of belief in a future that once felt out of reach. Every partnership we build and every conversation we have with districts holds the possibility of changing a student’s story.

My experience as a middle school math teacher and intervention math specialist has directly informed the work I’ve done on programs at McGraw Hill. When I contributed to the Differentiation Resource Book (DRB) for Reveal Math, I drew on my classroom and tutoring experience with intervention students to write and edit this teacher resource, ensuring it meets learners where they are and includes both remediation and enrichment options. More recently, I’ve applied that same insight to writing “A Slice of PI” articles in the Reveal Math User Community, such as "Choosing Differentiation Resources (K–5)," helping educators leverage their knowledge of their classrooms to select the differentiation options that will best support their students. In both projects, my teaching experience has guided my decisions, ensuring the materials reflect what truly supports student learning.