Barbara Gruber, once an elementary school teacher in Saratoga, is now offering a handful of online classes to aid teachers in skills that are meant to enrich their curriculum and at the same time count toward their own advancement.

The classes are structured for kindergarten through sixth-grade teachers, focusing on reading and writing skills, as well as classroom management.

Gruber has been in the teaching profession for quite some time. She first began as a teacher, then after several years moved into product development and educational seminars.

Starting her career later in life, after having children, Gruber graduated from San José State University and quickly moved into teaching at Saratoga Elementary, where she taught within the gifted program. While being a teacher Gruber was also a student, attending Santa Clara University to earn her master's degree in education. Soon after receiving her accreditation, Gruber transferred to Argonaut Elementary to teach fourth grade and then moved onto Congress Springs—an elementary school that was closed in the mid-1980s—to teach first and second grade.

Unfortunately, Saratoga schools experienced declining enrollment, which began forcing teachers out of the neighborhood and, subsequently, out of the field.

However, Gruber had a plan. While teaching, she began creating writing products. She and a co-worker, Maxine Beck, launched the products and started giving seminars to other teachers in California. When she was no longer teaching, this provided the perfect opportunity for Gruber to maintain her ties to the education world.

Within a year she had found a new publisher and began working out of her Saratoga home, setting up seminars on curriculum and staff development.

The series was popular, and within a few years Gruber went from touring 30 to 70 cities across the country.

"The seminar content was taken from some classroom experience, but a lot more of it was research," she says. "I think my forte is to read research and think about how a real teacher would do something in a real classroom with today's kids."

From what Gruber saw and experienced in Saratoga, she felt teachers, especially new teachers, needed support in setting up and maintaining their classes. "When you are new, no one tells you how to implement the work in the classroom and how to get the kids excited about it."

In 1995, after nearly a decade of lecture tours, Gruber decided it was time for a break. She and her husband had moved from Saratoga to Sonoma County in 1990, and had vineyards and rosebushes Gruber couldn't wait to attend to. However, Gruber missed being involved with the teaching world and was soon spinning her wheels again, thinking of products and seminars to help teachers instruct their pupils.

"I missed working with teachers. I continued to get the education journals and magazines, so I still had a lot of enthusiasm and interest in it," says Gruber.

After much deliberation and input from her daughter Sue Gruber, a kindergarten teacher in Petaluma, she decided to go the Internet route.

"Teachers are always looking for ideas and a better way to do things. I thought this would be a great way to offer ideas," says Gruber.

She believed teachers interested in the courses should also be able to use them as credit to advance, so she contacted a colleague at the University of the Pacific to set up an accreditation program. Currently each class can be taken for credit in one, two or three units, or for no credit.

Online courses include classes on teaching basic word skills and writing to developing positive communication with parents and colleagues. The classes are $99 for no credit or $62 per unit.

Although Gruber continues to teach seminars occasionally, she looks forward to her new venture taking off.

"The great thing about online is that teachers can do this on their own time and not be forced to attend night classes or use up their own class time." Gruber and her daughter are already preparing several new classes to offer online.

"I realized how lucky I am to be doing something that doesn't feel like work," says Gruber. "Teachers are a wonderful group to work with—they are dedicated, enthusiastic and appreciative. I could do this forever."

For more information, visit www.bgrubercourses.com.