Catalina Foothills parent Lisa Millerd is very active in making sure the quality of education for her sons stays top notch.

TUCSON — There are a few staples of the Catalina Foothills School District Board meetings. The meetings always start with a call to the audience for questions, the meetings always end with discussions of upcoming legislative agenda and the audience is mostly empty except for a small handful of regulars. One of those regulars is Lisa Millerd.

The 51-year-old is the mother of three boys, two of who are currently attending Catalina Foothills Schools and the third a recent college graduate. The family moved to Tucson five years ago for her husband’s job in the optics business.

When it comes to issues of education Millerd is more then a mom, making sure her youngest son’s fifth grade teacher makes a livable wage or her older son’s high school music programs continue. Millerd is an experienced teacher herself. A graduate of UCLA; she got a teaching certificate from University College London. Over the past 25 years she has taught English in all different parts of the world-to all kinds of young people. Her first job was in London. There she was the “American Teacher” as she explained and a sort of novelty to students.

After some time in England, she taught in a completely different environment, inner city Los Angles. There she saw not only what one would expect to see from a big inner city school, but also a few things that surprised her. Her next teaching job was another big change, this time teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) to students in a school in Orange County, Calif. This provided Millerd with another challenge, attempting to communicate with young people from all around the world. Millerd says she has enjoyed all her teaching experiences and loves seeing young people learn.

“I enjoy watching students understand their ability to be writers because I think that is part of what we do,” said Millerd from a Foothills bakery. “And the power of it, it is a very powerful medium because we now write in so many diverse ways. With texting and everything else they are constantly communicating.”



For the complete article see the 07-06-2010 issue.