Daily Schedule:

Available in Library All Day w/varied prep time AND w/exception of SSR period.

Contact Information

Phone Ext. # 51090 & 51091

Favorite Links:

I grew up knowing I wanted to be in education, probably because I came from a long line of educators. My mother was a teacher/counselor, and high school librarian; my grandfather was a high school science teacher, my aunt was a high school English teacher and Vice Principal, and I had various cousins who also were teachers.

My first teaching job was in the bay area, Tennyson High School, where I taught Home Economics and English. After three years, I married, moved to Belgium and started a family. After living and working for 8 years in Belgium, we moved back to California and my husband and I, with some other partners, opened a business. It was a tough business so after several years we I returned to work, first in insurance, and then back to education. I taught computers, keyboarding, consumer education and word processing at Los Altos High School.

We moved to Napa in 1989 and I began teaching at Franklin Middle School in Vallejo. After 4 years teaching English and Skills for Adolescence I applied for the Library Media Teacher opening and began my graduate studies in Library Science at San Jose State. I graduated with a Library Media Teaching Credential and a Masters in Library and Information Science. When the position for Library Media Teacher opened for the new high school, I applied and was hired to open the IMC-Library of Jesse Bethel High School.

From the beginning, it has been an exciting challenge to work at Jesse Bethel. Opening a new high school library was like a dream come true, and although there have been some rocky times and many challenges, it has been great fun, and I am proud of all we have accomplished in 5 years. When I remember opening the school with literally no books on the shelves, we have come a very long way. We still have a way to go to meet the California goal of library 10 books for every enrolled student, i.e. +- 20,000 books (we presently have a little over 12,000 books) and even further to meet the national standard of between 15 – 20 books for every enrolled student, i.e. 30,000 to 40,000 books, but we do have a great collection of current books. We also have a wonderful selection of multicultural books and two fantastic special collections: The Black History and the Filipino History collections.

We also have a great Young Adult (YA) fiction collection, but we need many more books to meet the needs of our emerging and avid adolescent readers at Jesse Bethel. Ongoing financial limits have kept us from expanding the collection as it should be, but many community members, students and teachers at Bethel have donated time, money and resources to help us become a state of the art high school library media center.

In addition to our book collection, we have 15 student computers that are in constant use, automated circulation systems for both library books and textbooks. We also have subscriptions to two wonderful online databased: World Book Encyclopedia Online and BigChalk Library, a periodical database and more! Both of these databases can be accessed from all the computers at school and all student home computers as well. Last, but not least, we have a wonderful section for the IMC at the Jesse Bethel website, which is where you are right now. Check out the many wonderful resources including our access to the Solano County Library system.