Ms. Lane's Website 

Background and Education

 My Curriculum Vitae (Updated 2024)

 

     Born and raised in Anderson, Indiana, I attended Purdue University and studied abroad at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland.  Upon graduating, I moved to Illinois to begin my teaching career at Edwardsville High School in 2003, where I taught for twenty-one years.  

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     In 2008, I earned a master's in Education from Washington University in St. Louis and completed a master's in American Culture Studies there in 2019.

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     Some of my most rewarding professional experiences include: my work as a fellow in the 2011 Piasa Bluffs Writing Institute (sponsored by the National Writing Project); being a Group Study Exchange member to Sweden for a month in 2012 (sponsored by Rotary International); and participating in four different teacher workshops and two teacher institutes sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. My most recent NEH experience (as one of only thirty teachers chosen from around the country) was spending three weeks during the 2023 summer studying the Gilded Age and Progressive Era at Loyola University in Chicago.  Also in 2022, I was a fellow at the Gilder-Lehrman summer seminar hosted by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.  

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   During the 2018 summer, I participated in teacher institutes at Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C., and with the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library in Chicago.

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  I have been an official volunteer with the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library in Indianapolis since 2019, and in 2021, I coordinated and moderated a webinar, Part II of their three-part "Mississippi River Trilogy" exploring life and culture historically and geographically along the Mississippi River.  That same summer I ran a two-hour teacher workshop. 

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     I love to read, watch movies, spend time with friends and family, and travel.  Since 2022, I have been active with the Madison County Historical Society were I get to share my love of history with younger students during our summer History Camp for Kids (ages 9-12).

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Check out my blog from traveling to Sweden for a month in 2012 via the Rotary's Group Study Exchange Program:

Sweden Blog