Kirsten Lee Howard was born and raised in New England. She received her bachelor’s degree from Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut, and a master’s in special education at Wheelock College in Boston, Massachusetts. She started her career teaching in Boston, but seven years later it was time to try being an adult in a different part of the country, so she and her partner moved to northern Virginia, where they still reside. Kirsten has taught special education, kindergarten, and first grade during twenty-one years of teaching. She currently teaches three-year-olds at Annandale Cooperative Preschool in Annandale, Virginia. She has used the Responsive Classroom approach in all of her roles and is a certified Responsive Classroom teacher and trainer. She is a coauthor of Empowering Educators: A Comprehensive Guide to Teaching Grades K, 1, 2. She could talk forever about the power of language and how it shapes every facet of the day, including how it empowers both her students and her own children. She is an avid reader, plant collector, and pandemic-inspired stress baker.