Elena joined SBSL in February 2020 after six successful years of teaching high school reading, literature, and art. She is passionate about her first love, reading, and devoured books from an early age. The local librarian had to raise the limit on the number of books Elena could check out as a child because she would borrow and read them by the stack. Elena is dedicated to sharing her love of reading and her commitment to effective literacy instruction for all children through research based practices and the science of teaching reading.
Elena has a M.Ed in Reading, a B.F.A in Fine Art, and is a PA Level II certified teacher in Reading, ESL, and Art. She began her career teaching elementary art. Later, she decided to return to her passion and got her Master’s in Reading at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. After obtaining her degree, she spent three years in Dubai as an ESL teacher traveling to the UK, the Middle East, and as far as China where she saw the cultural and societal change that access to quality education could bring to children, especially young girls in poor communities. Even in the poorest of villages in some of the most poverty stricken countries, there are teachers striving to help their students succeed. This inspired her to become an even stronger educator and to assist teachers in becoming the educators their students need them to be.
