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ASU English > Advancement Board > Joan Berry
After graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in education from Northwestern University, I taught in the Skokie, Illinois School District while my husband, Charlie, attended Northwestern Law School. We moved to Phoenix in 1973. The next 24 years were divided among my family, community activities, and personal pursuits. My first volunteer activity in Arizona was at Channel 8 on the ASU campus. Here, I had the pleasure of meeting Nick Salerno, who later presented my husband and me with the memorable opportunity of serving on a movie rating committee for the community. After having children, I became very involved in our sons’ school activities. Among them, I taught in the after school community school program, started the middle school’s arts dinner as the culmination of the Artist-in-Residence program, and served as a classroom instructor in the Art Masterpiece Program. In the 80s and 90s, both of our sons were very involved in competitive soccer, and we traveled extensively throughout the United States and to Europe and South America with soccer-related activities. Because of my love of and participation in ballet, I was a founder of the Phoenix Ballet Company and served on the board of directors that blended the then three professional companies into the present day Ballet Arizona. In the early 2000s I served on the Scottsdale Center for the Arts Performing Arts Board of Directors. While dividing my time among soccer fields, ballet classes and meetings, I also starting taking Spanish classes, which took me from Rio Solado and SCC to ASU. This led me to substituting in the Scottsdale Unified School District in the late 80’s and early 90’s and then on to working part-time at Friendly House, teaching intermediate and advanced level ESL classes from 1991-2003. Around this time, my husband and I began dancing west coast swing. I retired from Friendly House to pursue my MTESL degree at ASU, which I received in May of 2005. Since then weddings and grandchildren have brought my focus primarily back to my family. |
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