Viki Gardner worked her way up in the publishing industry from manufacturing assistant to book designer, and eventually changed direction to become a publisher's sales representative. While working in sales for a school book fair company, she decided to change careers in midlife. Determined to fulfill a childhood dream of being a teacher, she went back to college and obtained her BS in Elementary Education with a Reading Specialization from Texas Woman’s University in 1992. After teaching for 12 years in a traditional classroom, Viki returned to graduate school and obtained her MAED in Adult Education/Distance Learning from University of Phoenix in 2005. She has been teaching online (and loving it) ever since.

Viki has received numerous awards for her skills in teaching. Her most recent awards are the 2007 CTY Online Teaching Excellence Award from Johns Hopkins University, and an honored place in the 2005-2006 edition of Who's Who Among America's Teachers. Her work has appeared in Celebrate! Poets Speak Out- Educators 2002, on the Internet, and in other literary periodicals.

Besides teaching for Johns Hopkins' CTY (Center for Talented Youth) program, she has developed, and taught 7 English classes at Excel High School, a private online high school.  She also mentors students at Excel High School in the High School Equivalency program, and she tutors high school through doctoral students in an online writing lab at Smarthinking, a privately owned tutoring company. Other assignments that Viki has just acquired:

Aventa Learning

Advantages Online Private School

Christina International High School

Performance Learning Systems

Viki also does essay scoring for the PRAXIS and SAT.