Karen has over twenty-five years of educational experience as a teacher, school administrator, and language arts consultant. She enjoys sharing her passion for literacy with teachers, students, and parents!
In 2007, she completed her Master of Education degree at the University of Alberta with a focus in literacy. During the last few years, her passions for teaching and writing have collided. She has four books published with Pembroke Publishers, How Do I Get Them to Write? (2017), Freewriting with Purpose (2019), Literacy Leadership Matters (2023), and Literacy Instruction Matters (2025). Karen is also the author of seven Bug Club Phonics decodable readers and the senior author of Bug Club Morphology and the newly released Literacy Success Foundations published by Pearson. She continues to work with Pearson and is now working on a literacy resource for grade seven teachers and students.
Karen regularly provides professional development sessions to educators: at conferences, with the Alberta Professional Learning Consortium, to school districts, and to individual schools. She recently presented to teachers at ELAC 2026 in Banff, Reading For the Love of It 2026 in Toronto, the Summer Literacy Symposium in Saint-Sauveur, Quebec, and to early childhood teachers at ECEC 2025 in Edmonton. Karen has also presented to administrators through ASCD (2024) in Winnipeg, CAP2023 in Charlottetown, and uLead2023 in Banff. Karen presents regularly at conferences such as the Greater Edmonton Teachers’ Convention, the Calgary City Teachers’ Convention, the Central Alberta Teachers’ Convention, Mighty Peace Teachers’ Convention, the English as a Second Language Conference, the English Language Arts Council Conference, the North Central Teachers’ Convention, the Palliser District Teachers’ Convention, the Central East Alberta Teachers’ Convention, the South Eastern Alberta Teachers’ Convention, and with the Edmonton Regional Learning Consortium. In February 2020, Karen presented in Toronto at the Reading For the Love of It conference. In 2021, she presented a full day session as part of the Manitoba Teachers’ Society PD Day.
Karen is now booking professional development sessions for teachers as well as parent literacy evenings.
She continues to write and has many projects on the go! Subscribe to her blog for a weekly reflection for educators.