She was determined to teach from a very young age–she lined up her stuffed animals and taught them when she was little. She initially planned to be a math teacher, though. Described in her own words, her teaching style is “to provide students interesting things to think about (a.k.a. building background knowledge) which will enrich their understanding of text as well as their ability to think critically about the world they live in.” She “subscribe[s] to Daniel Willingham’s cognitive educational theories which tend to lead right back to Bloom’s original taxonomy of higher order thinking.”