About Lisa
I never intended to go into education as a career.
I planned to be a journalist and work in TV production (which I did).
Ultimately, I ended up teaching technology for almost 40 years.
It was rewarding to make a difference in a classroom.
Now I want to take my programs to as many classrooms as I can.
My Story
For 20 years I taught TV Production. It was my dream job. But we have to eventually wake up and that happened to me when the facility (and program I was teaching) was eliminated.
I was devastated. Little did I know something even better was in store for me. The principal of the school asked me if I was up for a challenge. Because of my technology experience, he thought I could come up with a new program - digital literacy.
I confess, at the time I didn't know what that was. But I dug in, did the research and came up with a course. We ran it as a pilot program and it worked. I was then given the task of designing a three-year program for 6th, 7th & 8th graders to teach them how to be safe online and how to more effectively use digital tools.
I was then given a new challenge. I was asked to become the school's library media specialist and completely re-invent the library and turn it into a library media center. I would still be teaching my course to 6th graders, but I now needed to train teachers to deliver the other courses.
They had no technology experience so I found a way to make it clear and easy to follow.
The administration and parents felt the skills were so valuable that every student needed to be given this instruction, so the program became required for all students in my middle school to take - even special education and ELL students.
I knew my students were learning important lessons, but what I didn't know was if were they applying the concepts. I soon found out.
One day a student who had taken my course came to me and said her friend (also one of my students) had gotten in over her head online and didn't know what to do. She had created a fake profile (which I warned my students about) and attracted a young man who wanted her to run away with him. She was afraid to tell her mother and didn't know how to get out of this situation.
I promised the student who came to me that I would keep her out of this, then ran to the principal and told her I was concerned about the safety of the student who had possibly attracted an online predator. Thankfully, she believed me. The authorities were called in. They gave the girl police protection while they tracked down the predator.
Once apprehended, what he (an adult pedophile) intended to do to this young woman was bad enough that he was sent to prison. And if that's not enough to curl your hair, we found out one more thing.
He was a teacher aide in our building. He was stalking the girl and she had no idea. This still makes my skin crawl when I think of how close we came to never seeing her again.
So what was the takeaway for me?
- The internet is an incredibly dangerous place.
- Parents are often totally unaware of what their children are doing online.
- Schools and parents send their children online with no knowledge of how to
stay safe.
- Children/teens make bad decisions, but will make better choices when they
know the consequences and other options.
- They need to be taught strategies for spotting/avoiding danger.
- My program, when applied, teaches students how to deal with threats, protect
themselves, help one other and use digital tools more effectively.
But the tipping point was when I ended my career in front of a computer during the first COVID shutdown and saw students, teachers and parents struggling to deal with distance learning and monitoring what their children were doing online. That's when I knew I had to come out of retirement and share my experience and the programs I spent years testing and honing.
It's my mission. Help me protect our children.