She spent several years teaching ESL and serving as a literacy strategist on a dual language campus in the Texas public school system, supporting bilingual, ESL, and mainstream teachers with program implementation. She also taught English as a foreign language in Taiwan and South Korea. In higher education she designed and served as program administrator for the M.Ed. in Bilingual Education and the M.Ed. in Reading and ESL for Dallas Baptist University. She completed her Ph.D. in Literacy Education and Linguistics at the University of North Texas, M.Ed. at the University of Texas at Arlington, and B.A. in Education at Dallas Baptist University.