Biography
Beginning in 2002 after a career as a network manager, Susan launched her teaching career in public schools and several high-caliber private schools, including Sparhawk School, JCDS Boston, and The Garden Road School. In these schools, she taught academic, artistic, and elective courses to kindergarten through seventh grade. During several summers, she taught in educational programs designed to assist students in inner-city, low-income, and transient populations. She has been working in group tutoring settings and tutoring privately since 2002 as well.
In 2005, Susan was introduced to teaching math the Singapore way; since that time, she has taught and/or tutored every level of math from kindergarten through high school. This led to other opportunities to consult and train teachers around the country, and more recently internationally; in September 2019, Susan spent two weeks consulting at an exclusive private school in China.
Susan consults with public, private, and charter schools in New York City and surrounding areas in math and science independently and through consulting companies. She also works in the US Virgin Islands to support the schools in a variety of subjects, and she collaborates with BOCES to support teachers in metro New York City. She has worked with hundreds, if not thousands, of teachers to support their shifts to more conceptual, meaningful ways of teaching literacy, math, science, and technology.
Early in 2013, she began professional curriculum writing. She freelanced as an editor and writer for homeschool manuals for middle school Math in Focus. Then in May, she signed on as a part-time writer with Great Minds, as part of the team writing the Common Core math curriculum for New York State titled Eureka Math. As the standards are influenced heavily by Singapore, she found her teaching experience to be helpful in this process. When the curriculum was completed, she moved into offering professional development in implementing the curriculum. She has also engaged on other curriculum and blog writing projects, including for Matholia. Since then, she has trained many teachers in this and other high-level curricula, as well as helping teachers implement older curricula in more meaningful ways.
This led to the recent publication of her book The Art of Teaching Math: A Manual for Success (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024). Susan wrote this in an international writers’ group starting in 2022, enjoying significant benefits from the excellent feedback from her writing peers, including Charles Fischer and Joanna Infeld.
In addition to her curriculum writing, Susan enjoys creative writing. In 2010, she published an anthology of her students’ stories,
The Sun Shines on the Golden Dragon and the Mysterious Wizard, But Not on the Fat Smelly Alien. At the same time, she also published her first children’s book, Butterfly from the Sky. 
Both books were written during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Susan was one of the first teachers to implement NaNoWriMo’s Young Writers Program and run annual creative writing programs for children during November. She also enjoy writing up DIY projects; one of her projects was featured in a How to Do Absolutely Everything Book. She’s now working on two additional novels, one for young adults and the other for older adults.
Prior to teaching, she worked as a network manager at MIT. This experience, along with masters coursework in Technology in Education, allows her to bring her understanding and enjoyment of technology to the classroom and to other teachers.
Certifications
New York State Professional Teaching Certificate, Grades 1-6
Massachusetts Professional Elementary Certification, Grades 1-6
Massachusetts Mathematics Certification, Grades 5-8
Education
Lesley University, M.Ed., 2003 (with coursework in Technology in Education)
University of Michigan, B.A., 1989 (Psychology/Creative Writing)
Publications
Eureka Math – team writer for Grades 2 and 5
“Water-Resistant, Upcycled Camcorder Case,” in How to Do Absolutely Everything: Homegrown Projects from Do-It-Yourself Experts, 2013
Butterfly from the Sky, 2010
The Sun Shines on the Golden Dragon and the Mysterious Wizard, But Not on the Fat Smelly Alien (Editor), 2010