Throughout her long career in public education, she has taught preK-high school students, as well as graduate students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and at Illinois State University. She served as a building principal in several culturally and linguistically diverse school districts, as the Coordinator of Literacy and School Improvement in a linguistically, racially, and culturally diverse suburban school district, and as an assistant superintendent for human resources for a large school district. As a professor at UIUC, she was named one of twelve Stafford Fellows for the National Institute for Leadership on Disability and Students Placed At-Risk (NILDSPAR).