My six weeks training in GirlTECH during the summer of 1995 changed my professional life like no other single event ever has. It introduced me to the world of publishing on the Internet. I found a confident voice and a medium to use it in. It inspired me to publish my math and computer lessons, start a web site for our school, and push and prod the teachers around me to embrace the technology of the Internet.

Right now I'm teaching our school's Web Mastering class. It's a daily wonder to see my students apply the principals of graphic design as they make images in PhotoShop and create web pages in HTML code. Without GirlTECH, I'd still be teaching straight programming. Certainly that's a useful trade, but Internet publishing seems to release the creativity of both sides of the brain. My best students embrace both aesthetics and technology. I like to think that my love of the subject infects and encourages them.

A great project scatters seeds that grow and reproduce many times over. My original GirlTECH teacher, Siva Kumari, and project leader Cynthia Lanius, helped me find a subject now dear to my heart. Publishing and communicating on the Internet is as much a part of me as the clothes I wear. I have started and assisted in Internet-related projects at our school and in my district because I literally can't help myself.

I am still involved in the on-line help group that GirlTECH sponsors for its participants. This nurturing is very important because GirlTECH teachers are often technology pioneers at their schools. Sometimes it's lonely being a pioneer, and the network gives encouragement and technical assistance.

Thank you, thank you, CRPC, for starting and continuing to sponsor GirlTECH!