A native of southern Louisiana and a product of the St. Bernard Parish Public Schools, Schneider holds degrees in secondary education, English and German (BS, Louisiana State, 1991), guidance and counseling (MEd, West Georgia, 1998), and applied statistics and research methods (PhD, Northern Colorado, 2002). She is in her 20th year of full-time teaching and has taught from grade 7 to graduate school in several states (Louisiana, Georgia, Colorado, and Indiana). After 14 years away, Schneider returned home in 2007 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and is in her 8th full-time year of teaching sophomore English in a southern Louisiana traditional public high school.