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. Her first book, How Do I Get Them to Write?, was published in May of 2017 by Pembroke Publishers in Canada and Stenhouse Publishers in the United States. Her second book, Freewriting with Purpose, was published in January of 2019. Her newest release, Literacy Leadership Matters, is geared for administrators and literacy leads within elementary schools. All three books are available on the Pembroke website. Karen is also the author of seven Bug Club Phonics Decodable Readers published by Pearson. Subscribe to her blog for a weekly reflection for educators.
Karen regularly provides professional development sessions to educators. Most recently she presented to administrators at CAP2023 in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island and uLead2023 in Banff, Alberta. Over the last few years she has presented at 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 October 2021, she presented a full day session as part of the Manitoba Teachers’ Society PD Day.
Karen is available to present professional development to school staffs and writing residencies for students. The 2023-2024 school year is filling up quickly!
She continues to write and is currently working on a morphology project with Pearson, a book for parents, several picture books, and a novel for middle-grade readers.