Deb Oliver was born in Rockford, Illinois, where she lived until she was eight years old. Deb then moved to Brodhead, Wisconsin, and she lived there for many years. In 1990 she moved with her husband and children to Stevens Point, finished college and received her BA from UWSP in 1995. For the past six years, Deb has been teaching English in the Stevens Point School District. She started out at Stevens Point Area Senior High (SPASH) as an English teacher. During her third year at SPASH, she was asked to spend half of her day working in the Diploma Program at the Alternative School. What a contrast and a challenge! She loved it. Deb's greatest reward was knowing that the students who slipped through the cracks of SPASH would surface again at the Alternative School. She would have a second chance to work with them. Through both her failure and the students, they could learn from their mistakes and succeed the second time. And they have. Deb now spends her entire day at Emerson Alternative School working in the Diploma Program. She spends most of her time, working one on one, or in small groups, teaching reading, writing, and study skills. Deb also counsels, nurtures, and teaches life skills, as well as math, science, social studies, and childcare. She feels like she is the luckiest person on earth. Deb learned about Multiple Intelligence teaching styles while working on her BA and has always incorporated the theory of multiple intelligence into her lesson plans at both SPASH and the Alternative School. Deb's philosophy of teaching is quite simple and fits well with both Brain Based Learning and Multiple Intelligence. "All students learn in different ways, and so, to reach them, I must tap into their own style of learning." Deb's hobbies are reading (of course), listening to music, singing, reading out loud to students and loved ones, traveling (recent jaunts -Costa Rica, Hawaii) bicycling and raising coy in her ponds around her home. She currently has 18 fish averaging 10-12 inches.
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