Preschool teacher and curriculum designer in Woodbridge, Virginia — weaving inquiry-based STEM into the daily rhythm of early childhood. I believe that a child who can name the parts of a leaf is already learning systems thinking.
What I'm Working On Right Now
I teach at a small preschool in Prince William County where the garden is our first classroom. Every morning begins the same way: we check on the tomatoes, count the beans that sprouted overnight, and ask the questions we couldn't answer yesterday.
This site is where I document the work — lesson plans that grew from real questions children asked, reflections on teaching under pressure, and the connections between big ideas (space computers, vascular transport, quorum sensing) and small hands reaching for a worm in the soil.
Curiosity is the starting condition. Everything else is scaffolding. (Photo: Pexels)
On July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 guidance computer threw Alarm 1201 during descent to the Moon. It wasn't broken — it was choosing. The computer shed non-essential tasks to meet its hard deadline. Neil Armstrong had to trust the machine, and the machine's designers had to trust their decisions about what was essential. In my classroom of 4- and 5-year-olds, I face the same question every single day: what matters enough to keep, and what can I let go?
Barbara wrote about Apollo 11's guidance computer as an exercise in quorum consensus — and it made me think about how I run a classroom where every voice matters but we still need to land the mission.
