Sara Davis Powell has been a teacher all her life, first with her stuffed animals, and then with students in elementary, middle, and high schools, followed by college undergraduate and graduate students. She currently is Professor and Chair of the Department of Education at Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina and is active in the American Educational Research Association, the National Middle School Association, and Kappa Delta Pi. In addition to being a frequent conference speaker and facilitator of professional development for K-12 schools, she has authored many articles and several books including the college text Introduction to Middle School (Pearson, 2e, 2011). Sara is the mother of four grown sons and lives with her husband Rus in a cottage on the Catawba River.