Passionately committed to education in the 21st century, I love learning with and from my students. A country girl at heart, I am at home on my John Deere tractors, plowing, harvesting, snowblowing, digging and planting: it’s that feel of the land and kinship to it, the connectedness to nature. From feeding my fish to falling into our pond in the middle of winter, from dealing with flooding and washouts to blizzards on country roads, I love life in the country, even on “one of those days.” Country life breeds a sense of self-sufficiency, less IS more, and space constraints [inside the farmhouse] force economy of living, a simpler life.