Staff Directory

Nick Glass—Founder & Executive Director

Nick Glass has thoroughly enjoyed his circuitous professional route to the founding of TeachingBooks.net. Right after graduating from Grinnell College, he spent six fabulous seasons as an executive in Major League Baseball (the Chicago White Sox, the Office of the Commissioner, and the San Francisco Giants), and then completed his MA in the history of multicultural education. It was while working on his dissertation (at the University of Wisconsin-Madison) that he became a bookseller at the independent Pooh Corner bookstore and realized that his calling was in children's books. Since starting TeachingBooks.net in 2001, he has been very active in the education, library, and ed technology worlds. He writes monthly columns for 'Curriculum Connections', an e-newsletter he started in partnership with School Library Journal, and for LibrarySparks magazine. He has published articles in a handful of educational journals and has spoken at national ALA, IRA, AASL, and SCBWI conventions and dozens of state and provincial conferences, where he loves to share the power of online materials to generate enthusiasm for books and reading. In the past year, Nick has also given more than a dozen presentations to librarians about their role with the Common Core State Standards for ELA and Literacy. Nick served on the 2009 John Newbery Medal Committee, which selected The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman as the most distinguished book for children of the year, and on the Coretta Scott King Book Award 40th Anniversary Public Awareness Campaign committee. Currently Nick is serving on the Caldecott Award 75th Anniversary Celebration Task Force and the Green Earth Book Award committee.

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Annette Smith—Director of Instructional Technology & Support

In her position of Director of Instructional Technology & Support, Annette Smith, will be directing all of the educational activities of the company. She is charged with helping educators optimize their use and enjoyment of our service while also aligning our materials to student achievement and professional development activities. Annette comes to TeachingBooks with a wealth of dynamic and relevant experiences, having been a teacher, a media specialist, a professor, and most recently the Director of Technology at a Wisconsin school district. Annette's knowledge and passion for education has led her to serve on the Board of Directors for the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). She was also the President of the Wisconsin Educational Media and Technology Association (WEMTA) and is now a regular speaker and writer for dozens of organizations. We are thrilled to have her expertise and leadership as we further the TeachingBooks mission of infusing multimedia into everyone's reading and literacy work.

Bret Hoffman—Project Consultant

After receiving a degree in Finance, Investment and Banking from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Bret Hoffman is refreshed to be working at a company without an exclusive bottom-line orientation. Bret was drawn to TeachingBooks.net because of its educational mission and drive to promote technological literacy. He first became familiar with publishing and the world of children's literature as a summer intern with Scholastic, Inc. in New York. At TeachingBooks, Bret started as an intern right after graduating from college, and subsequently was promoted to Director of Accounts, and for 3 years served as the company's Managing Director, where is guided the development of the newest, most complex phase of the TeachingBooks website. He is grateful for the opportunity to be interacting primarily with teachers and librarians, whose positive energy and intentions are continuously encouraging.

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Carin Bringelson, MLS—Director of Online Content & Collections

With master's degrees in Educational Policy Studies and in Library & Information Studies, Carin Bringelson enjoys combining two of her career interests into one professional position. Since 2004, Carin has headed up TeachingBooks.net's Content Department where she is responsible for directing the identification, classification, production, and inclusion of new resources for the database. She especially enjoys assisting customers who are searching the collection for materials they can use with students. Carin's passion for Intellectual Freedom is an integral part of her life, both inside and outside of her work at TeachingBooks.net.

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Danika Brubaker, MLS—Author & Publisher Liaison Librarian

While completing her Masters in Library and Information Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Danika Brubaker happily discovered there are many paths a librarian can take. An Internet enthusiast and the daughter of an educator, Danika is excited about how technology and education dovetail in her work at TeachingBooks.net. In her role as Author & Publisher Liaison Librarian, Danika builds bridges between authors, publishers, educators, and students. She greatly enjoys calling authors all over the world to digitally record them sharing the story behind their books. These audio clips become Original Book Readings on TeachingBooks.net so teachers, students, and families can hear directly from their favorite authors.

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Susan Herr-Hoyman, MLS—Resource Librarian

If there were no books for young people, Susan Herr-Hoyman would be up a deep dark creek. A couple chapters back in her life, books supported her teaching curriculum for preschoolers. In the next chapter, she promoted and shared books with preschoolers through adults for ten years as a youth services librarian. In the other hours of life she enjoys the outdoors, painting, writing and volunteering with various community organizations.

TaNisha N. Caldwell—Accounts Support Administrator

As the Accounts Support Administrator, TaNisha Caldwell is happy to join such a positive and encouraging collection of people—her colleagues at TeachingBooks.net, authors and illustrators she's able to either learn about or learn more about, and the appreciative educators who are enthused to incorporate multimedia resources into their teaching styles. She enjoys reading to her niece and watching how excited a four year old can get over a colorful illustration or well-worded rhyme and is therefore quite happy she's working for a company where she can learn about the latest happenings in the literary world. The skills she acquired while earning her B.S. in Marketing help her to couple business concepts with building successful relationships. Therefore, she's delighted to be working for a small company where she can contribute her ideas and really get to know the educational community that TeachingBooks serves.

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