I served as a teacher-librarian for thirteen years, ten years at the elementary level and three years in a high school. For the 2008-2009 school year, I returned to service in a combined junior high-high school library. During my school library tenure, I served in fixed, mixed, and flexibly scheduled school libraries. Regardless of the schedule, I always strive to collaborate for instruction with classroom teacher and specialist colleagues in order to integrate literature and information literacy into the classroom curriculum.

In my experience, a flexibly scheduled library program provides greater opportunities for effective learning and teaching. Through co-planning, co-teaching, and co-assessing lessons and units of instruction, I have benefited from job-embedded professional development. Learning alongside my peers propelled my growth as an educator. This book, which includes lessons that I co-taught during my elementary teacher-librarian career, is the culmination of this experience.

I have also served as a district-level teacher-librarian mentor, a literacy coach, a classroom teacher, and a teacher educator. I currently teach in the School of Library and Information Studies at Texas Woman's University in Denton. My current research centers on the instructional partner role of school librarians as a pathway to leadership and job-embedded professional development to impact student learning. In addition, I am the author of two published children's picture books.

I earned my graduate degrees at the University of Arizona; my master's degree in library science from the School of Information Resources and Library Science (1992) and my doctorate in education from the Department of Language, Reading and Culture (2003).