WELCOME TO THE MARION COUNTY CENTER FOR THE ARTS!

It is my great privilege to be the acting teacher in the MCCA program. I love my job because I get to work with some of the most talented students in Marion County. In the spring of 2007 The Marion County Center for the Arts at West Port High was designated as a Florida Department of Education Arts Achieve! Model School. Arts Achieve! Model Schools is a program designed by Arts for a Complete Education/Florida Alliance for Arts Education (ACE/FAAE) to recognize school models that offer a comprehensive, sequential, high-quality program of visual and performing arts instruction. The recognition program will model the Music Demonstration School Program, but will encompass all of the fine arts (dance, music, theatre, and visual art). The purpose of this program is to identify, recognize, and promote statewide school fine arts programs at the elementary, middle/junior, and high school levels that balance diversity, high performance standards, and instructional quality in visual and performing arts education.

I have been teaching in Marion County since 1988 and am a proud member of the inaugural faculty of West Port High School. Just a few years ago I stood on the stage of our gorgeous performing arts center when it was still a big mound of dirt and dreamed of the day when we would be producing plays and musicals on it! I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from New York University where I majored in acting. I fell in love with directing in my senior year of college when I took my first directing class. I have a wonderful husband and two children. My daughter, Megan, is an artist and teacher in Jacksonville and married to a Jacksonville Sheriff's officer. My son Reid, a West Port Alumnus,  is a literature major at New College, the Honors College of Florida.  I am currently working on my Master of Arts in the Humanities at California State University's Humanities External Degree Progam.  I enjoy reading, bicycling, motorcycling, playing with my dogs, and being a grandmother.