Our Educators
Our beloved teachers are the heart and soul of Building Blocks!
Nicole Gomez
Director & Lead Teacher
Teacher Nicole grew up in the Bay Area. She earned her BA degree in Child and Adolescent Development from San Jose State University and her AA in Liberal Arts at De Anza College. She moved to the mountains with her family in 2005, and attended Building Blocks from 2009-10 as a parent volunteer when her youngest daughter was enrolled.
Prior to teaching at Building Blocks, Nicole combined her love of marching band with her passion for early childhood education by teaching music classes for 3-8 year olds with Groove School of Percussion. She has also volunteered in the childcare center of the San Jose Family Shelter and worked with foster children as a Court Appointed Special Advocate. As her children moved through Loma and CT English, Nicole was always volunteering in the classroom and in their extracurricular activities, serving on the board of a local softball organization and as chairperson of Theatre in the Mountains. Nicole currently volunteers as chairperson of the Loma Prieta Community Foundation REC program.
Nicole loves her role as Director and Lead Teacher at Building Blocks. She is honored to have the opportunity to touch the lives of so many young mountain children and loves being immersed in the local mountain community. Outside of school, Nicole can usually be found at home with her husband, snuggling with her dogs and cats, on the pickleball court, or traveling to Buffalo, New York and Farmington, Maine to visit her daughters, who are away for college.
Rebecca Witmer
Co-Director & Lead Teacher on Wednesdays
Teacher Rebecca grew up in Lawrence, Kansas. She earned her BA in Literature and her multiple-subject teaching credential and Masters in Education from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Then she taught at Bullis Charter School in Los Altos, California, for eight years until she and her husband had their first child in 2017. At that time, they settled in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Their second child was born in 2020.
As soon as her family joined Building Blocks Cooperative Preschool, Rebecca became involved in the steering committee, first as the membership coordinator and then as the chair of the committee. Her experiences volunteering in the classroom at Building Blocks inspired her to obtain her Site Supervisor Child Development Permit for teaching preschool from UCSC Extension. She loves nurturing children's curiosity and social-emotional development through play. She also aspires to support families through these challenging but rewarding early years.
Along with teaching at Building Blocks, Rebecca volunteers at Loma Prieta Elementary School and leads the grades 3-5 Sunday School class at Mountain Bible Church. She swims, bikes, and/or runs nearly every day and races in triathlons throughout the year.