So this is my 16th year in education, my first 13 years I was a classroom teacher in the Santa Rosa Consolidated School District. I taught every grade level K through 12. I taught PE, I taught health, I taught math, I taught science, and one year I was even the librarian for the high school. The last nine years of my career were spent at the high school teaching math and health as well as I was the head volleyball coach. I was an assistant basketball coach and assistant track coach as well as the BPA advisor and the Mesa advisor. An additional two years after my 13 years as a classroom teacher I was an assistant principal in Roswell Independent School District. After that I applied to where I am now which is the New Mexico Public Education Department College and Career Readiness Bureau. Here at the College and Career Readiness Bureau I do a lot of things that I did in the in the classroom. I oversee Health Science Career Cluster Pathways I oversee CTSOS, FFA, BPEA, TSA, FCCLA, and HOSA skills in general through our Career Technical leadership project which is hosted there at Eastern New Mexico University. I also oversee the Early College High School programs across the state and then I manage Perkins and next-gen funding for region I which includes Portales, Clovis, and Melrose. I have the pathways to careers math curriculum that's one of my main jobs that's what I was specifically hired for. We are creating a free math curriculum that correlates to career Pathways to answer the question why do I need to know math and so this has a lot of information about careers. All of the lessons are correlated to specific careers so that students can see the relevance between math and careers.

I am from a little town in New Mexico called Anton Chico and that's where my mom and her family are from I was born in Denver on her trip to see her sisters and I was born out of state in Colorado came back and grew up in Anton Chico, New Mexico where I went to a K-8 school and then I attended Santa Rosa high school. We lived so far away so we had to take a bus every day to school and every day back home. I've got two siblings I've got a younger sister and a younger brother, I have a family of my own so I have a husband. I have three kids, I have a daughter and two sons, and then I have a granddaughter who lives with us too as well.

I had a master mentor coaching program through Northern New Mexico College when I first started teaching and so we were doing this awesome work with how to stay in the profession because that there was a huge overturn of people coming into the teaching profession. So we were doing this work and the director who created this program and wrote a grant for it was trying to find a college that would accept the credits. We would get a specific degree for doing all this work and taking all these courses and Eastern New Mexico was the college that accepted the program of study. They also accepted if you come in and do this here's some Pathways that you could take so there was like a pathway in curriculum instruction. There was a pathway in educational leadership too as well so I chose the curriculum instruction path because I was all about programs and so because it was a free grant and our courses would be get paid for I was like oh no this is a great opportunity but in addition to that Eastern has always had a great reputation for their educational programs. So I was all for it jumped on board and so that's where I got my first degree in curriculum instruction. My master's program went through that whole process but then I went back again because Dr. Penny Garcia I believe she had reached out to teachers in New Mexico about the NISSL program which is the National Institute for school leadership, and so here was another opportunity to get my licensure in administration through this program and again it was free so I'm like I don't want student loan debt.  I'm trying to find all these free programs for me to you know Advance my career as well as get quality information so Eastern New Mexico the courses that I took all of it was quality information it was relative to what I was doing what I was interested in and so that's how I obtained my Master's in curriculum instruction. As well as my licensure in administration through Eastern New Mexico University.

I grew up at Eastern, I was a basketball player and I remember we always went to Camp and as a volleyball coach I always took my girls to camp at Eastern. I already had that sense of culture. A lot of professional development I've done through Eastern New Mexico University. Just being a greyhound the free the t-shirts that I get in the mail are really great too for being an alumni but my students too like being part of the CTLP project when I was a BP advisor they do the officer leadership training there at Eastern in the Summers and so I would take my students there, so that they could do the leadership program. Just the overall feel of the staff how friendly they are, Dr. Brinson was awesome with me just the concern that they have for their students in general that's the great thing about being a greyhound. They really care about their students as well as hold high expectations for students and their work.

There's a couple of things that I do like in my spare time and I put that in quotations because I have no spare time. I have my 40 hour a week job which is you know everything that I listed to you that I do, but I am also the volunteer Library director for a library in Anton Chico where I do everything there. I'm the I.T person, I'm the billing person, I'm the curriculum collection developer, all of those things and so what I really work on is focusing on programs. This summer I got a grant over eight thousand dollars to run the summer reading program at the Anton Chico library and so it was great because I used that funding to buy the kids, that completed the program, school supplies gathered all that data you know you have to do reporting and so forth. It really got me to thinking as to what other programs can I give to my community so there was another program for adults that I basically wrote and so it was a digital learning skills for adults and so I just received notification that I received a four thousand dollar Grant to provide workshops in digital skills to adults. So I'm going to be working on that so in my experience with being an educator has led me to assisting not just the people that I work with, the teachers and so forth, but actually with the general public in providing multiple opportunities for them to learn a new skill or to get access to resources and opportunities. I do a lot of outreach and a lot of it you know comes from the fact that I am able to be in this position and I have access to a lot of resources. I'm able to meet with a lot of people and find like hey you know this can assist in the educational world but it can also assist in the community world too as well.

Everything was free there so I didn't have to apply for an additional scholarship but I had all A's in my graduate work for the exception of one B so I carried a good GPA. I don't know what it is right now I'd have to look it up it's like a 3.9. It was an honor too to be like we were part of this master Mentor coaching group that was very selective as to who was picked for that and then as a result Eastern was the one that picked these people being able to get something more out of it than just the courses they were able to work more. They were able to work towards the Masters and what was great too was I didn't have to take as many courses as the rest of the participants I had already taken a bunch of graduate courses at New Mexico Highlands University which was my undergraduate work and I had started my licensure, when I started my licensure I started taking graduate courses just in case later on I wanted to go back and get my masters and what was great about Eastern is they accepted those courses. I had to take fewer courses than anyone else to get my masters and that was a great thing about Eastern having that relationship there are the courses from New Mexico Highlands University correlating with the courses from Eastern.

I think so far my proudest moment is getting this position with the public education department because as a teacher I was only selective to whoever entered my classroom and as a coach who I was involved with. As a principal same thing but now in my position I'm able to reach far more people than I did as a classroom teacher and as an assistant principal I said too like with Dr. Brinson and Dr. Garcia that National Institute of school leadership the courses that we took for from there were very beneficial in the type of work that I was doing and they're assisting me now in this process with the work that I'm doing now so I think those. I love education so I never had a favorite teacher or a favorite class I just think all classes are beneficial to me but if I had to there was an assessment course and I don't remember who the professor was at the time but that assessment course was very rigorous and beneficial to what I do now with data a lot of people think that education is not very rewarding and what I've learned like when I first started I was like oh my God I don't know if this is you know if this is what I want to do, but just the experiences that come and I never believed it when other people say like you're not going to see it until later on when a student comes up to you and says you know thank you and I was like nobody's ever going to come to me and tell me thank you for whatever you did for me but they do eventually. I go out to my town where I have previous students are like they still call me Miss they're like, “hi Miss how are you” and they you know even though I'm not their teacher anymore they call me Miss just because all these other people call me Miss and so the rewarding experience comes a lot later and it at the time it may not feel like if it's very rewarding at all but eventually it does. There are some rewards in the process and just knowing that I was able to shape a student you know and assist in their pathway is part of that rewarding process. My experience different from others like I wasn't able to go to homecoming or any of those things. Because what made it feasible and the other reason why I chose Eastern is everything was online. Eastern was online before it was an online thing right. Living where I lived in Anton Chico I was able to take the courses without going to Eastern or having to live there or anything and I was still working and going to school at the same time you know as a classroom teacher and taking my courses so that was one of the other reasons why I chose Eastern because they gave that online option. That's my experience at Eastern was it was all online and so it was great to know too that when I showed up for graduation the teachers that the professors that I took courses with online were at graduation and they're like hey oh so you're Breezy this is the kind of online that you weren't able to see anybody's face everything was done you know based on the words that you wrote and the interactions the discussions that you had and so that was my experience at Eastern but to know that you know when you did show up they're like oh you're Breezy great you know they still knew who you were so I  think in I think I've mentioned it before it helped me get my masters in order for me to um move up in my levels of teaching so I'm a level three instructional teacher because of the Masters that I got through Eastern so I was able to you know I was able to move pretty quickly through my levels of teaching from level one to two to three and in addition I was able to become an administrator and get my administrative license because of the NISSL program that I attended through Eastern New Mexico University and so and so because of the education that I got with them as well as the experiences that I've had in the classroom and as an administrator I was able to you know show qualifications for this job that I have now with the PED.

I don't know I my path took a different pathway like I was going to be a medical doctor that that was my dream and you know life turns and has its you know has its way of doing things so I think eventually I would like to mesh something with that like I taught math and I was good at teaching math but my health classes like my health science classes is where I was like so passionate like I was still passionate in all my other classes but I think people could see the passion that I have for health science based on the fact that that's what I had wanted to do so I think like that would be one of my dreams is to mesh the health science and I kind of do that now but in more General maybe um really correlate Health Science with the educational experience that I have I know that I also have an EMT basic license certification I'm thinking of pursuing that a little bit more so that I can become a paramedic and then be able to teach courses for the rural area where I live because we don't have anybody sort of who's both a teacher and you know a paramedic so that might be something that I would push for later on a dream of mine is to be able to go teach at the college level those type of courses Career Technical education courses.

Everybody always asks me and I would ask kids that too and I was like I can't expect them to answer that if I don't even know who my role model is. I'm just thinking that like any I don't necessarily have like any specific role model in mind but I think anybody who values education is my role model and I have a deep respect for I really don't have anybody specific that I would say is my role model.

Volunteering, running the library, I love to read, and I'll read anything like from research books educational books to even our children's books. I love to find and this is funny so I like to find the best about each city or town in New Mexico and do it or visit it.

 I just want to thank Eastern New Mexico for all the opportunities that were presented to me and that I've taken advantage of. I think that Eastern is great when it comes to what their mission and vision is towards education really focusing on the student and they're always focusing on improving too as well and actually getting feedback.