Kathleen Middleton MS, MCHES® » Board of Directors

Biographical Info

Kathleen has more than 30 years of experience as an educator. She has a master of
health science from California State University, Long Beach. She is also a Master
Certified Health Education Specialist.

Kathleen started her professional career as a middle school health teacher in the
ABC Unified School District. She then worked for the National Center for Health
Education as the Director of School Health Curriculum developing the K–6 Growing
Healthy Curriculum.

She worked at ETR Associates as the Senior Editor in charge of school health
products, which included, the Contemporary Health Education Series for Middle
School and High School, Reducing the Risk, and Actions for Health K–6.

Kathleen founded ToucanEd, Inc. in 1995 as she saw a need to provide custom
product development services for professionals in schools and in other arenas. At
the same time, she became the Coordinator for Health Education and Physical
Education for the Monterey County Office of Education Salinas, California.

Kathleen and the ToucanEd staff have created hundreds of health education titles
for preschool through college students. Kathleen was a contributing author for the
1999 Harcourt Brace health education textbook series for K–6 and author for the
2005 and 2009 Glencoe McGraw Hill Health, a high school textbook. She directed
the conceptualization and development of all the curricular materials on
HEALTHteacher.com, which was launched by WebMD in January, 2000. And, she
was an instructor for the health education for teachers’ course in 5 different
universities.

As a consultant, Kathleen is considered a subject matter expert in health education
and assessment. She served as the health education and professional development
consultant for the Health Education Assessment Project (HEAP) and worked with
ACT to develop assessment items for health education. She conducts performance
assessment training for health education internationally.

In 2017, The California Department of Education (CDE) began the development of
a new Health Education Framework. Subsequently (2019 to 2021), she and the
ToucanEd team worked with CDE and the Orange County Office of Education to develop professional materials for teachers and administrators related to the
Health Education Framework.

Kathleen is passionate about health education, and ToucanEd, and to providing the
best possible work environment for staff. When she isn’t working, she is playing
ukulele, or relaxing at her home near the beach in Santa Cruz with her husband
Scott, and her dog Otto, who often comes to work at ToucanEd.