Pat spent twenty-five years at Yankton High School where she taught 10th - 12th graders in contemporary fiction, nonfiction, creative writing, and 10th grade cyber-composition. She concentrated on integrating web technology into English classrooms, presented on the topic at NCTE conventions in Baltimore and Atlanta, and helped facilitate the ACE technology workshop in Atlanta and San Francisco.
Pat was a member of NCTE, the South Dakota Council of Teachers of English (SDCTE), Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), and International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). She had also served as the Secretary of the Assembly of Computers in English (ACE). In addition to writing lesson plans for ReadWriteThink, Pat wrote and published mystery short stories.