I'm a writer and instructional designer by trade. My bachelor's and unfinished master's degrees are in Scientific and Technical Communication from the University of Minnesota. At the time, that degree was in the no-longer-existent Department of Rhetoric, so I've had my fair share of rhetorical theory courses, too.

I worked professionally in the Minneapolis metro as a consultant and therefore was able to experience different corporate cultures through projects at 3M (most known today for their Post-It Notes^® but they do so much more), Best Buy, Target Corporation, Northwest Airlines, and so many more companies as well as working with professors at the University of Minnesota to design e-learning (back in the 1990s when it was all new).

After my focus switched to raising two boys, I learned how to navigate public schools in three states but settled in to homeschool because my boys learn differently.

Later I thanked God that we were able to learn more about Him because we had the time to focus on the Bible and bring Jesus into any and every conversation.

From my grad-school days, I knew how to teach college students how to write, but as a homeschool mom I had to learn how to teach boys who resist writing.

So I put on my academic hat and began researching how to reach resistant writers and then implemented those techniques with my boys and taught other parents to do the same.

In addition, God introduced me to curricula including Handwriting Without Tears, Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW), The Lost Tools of Writing (LTW), and more.

I applied my studies on writing process, including the rhetorical canon (invention, arrangement, elocution, memory, and delivery) to how I taught.