Viki Gardner lives in Texas with her husband and two dogs and has been teaching English language arts for 15 years. Prior to her teaching career, Viki worked her way up in the publishing industry from manufacturing assistant to book designer, and eventually became a sales representative.  While working in sales for a school book fair company, she decided to change careers in midlife.  Determined to fulfill a childhood dream of being a teacher, she went back to college and obtained her BS in Elementary Education with a Reading Specialization from Texas Woman’s University in 1992.  After teaching for 12 years in a traditional classroom, Viki returned to graduate school and obtained her MAED in Adult Education/Distance Learning from University of Phoenix in 2005. Viki has received numerous awards for her skills in teaching, including a place in the 2005-2006 edition of Who's Who Among America's Teachers. Her work has appeared in Celebrate!  Poets Speak Out- Educators 2002, on the Internet, and in other literary periodicals.  Besides teaching Johns Hopkins' CTY program, she teaches English at Excel High School, a private online high school, and she tutors high school through doctoral students in an online writing lab at Smarthinking, a privately owned tutoring company.