About

We are Cora and Erin, a mother-daughter team who have a passion for teaching, learning, education, and fun.  Teach to Engage is our attempt to share teaching expertise and knowledge and strengthen our own teaching and learning.

Cora

Who am I?  I love languages and have studied German, Japanese and Spanish.  At one point in my life, I could communicate well in each, but have never had a perfect accent or perfect grammar.  I love travel and living in other countries.  I started out as an ESL teacher, spent years teaching as a volunteer (Sunday school, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, school clubs, tutoring, mentoring), taught elementary school Spanish for 8 years, and am now focused on literacy and how to get kids to read.  My favorite thing about teaching is figuring out new ways to make something stick, which is my case often involves crazy hats, props and puppets.

Erin

I’ve been recruited to help my mom with her zany teaching and volunteer projects ever since I was little, from helping her make an earthquake cake (that did explode like an earthquake) to building a castle out of cardboard boxes to cutting out game pieces for her Spanish students.  She is definitely where I get my love of adventure and creativity and wide assortment of interests. Since graduating from college in 2005, I’ve worked for a college’s community service center, lived in Nicaragua for a year tutoring kids and helping start a library, taught Spanish to preschool and elementary school students, and most recently, have started grad school for library and information science.  I’m really interested in the ways new technology and media can strengthen students’ learning and support teachers.