It all began...  No, no, no, I won't drag you through that.  But I will share this. 

In June of 1999, after earning my teaching degree from the University of Colorado, my wife, two cats and I drove an overstuffed Ryder truck across two-thirds of this country and right on up into Vermont.  For five years I had resisted my wife's pleas to move to the Northeast (her childhood stomping grounds) on the basis of my assumptions: too cold,  too cloudy, too vintage.  I was a product of the West--expansive, sunny, laid back.  Eastward expansion?  Forget it!  Then I caved.

We landed in Jeffersonville, VT late one night.  The next morning, when I stepped out onto the back deck of the house, looked across the vast, foliated valley at backside of Smuggler's Notch, I breathed deeply and whispered, "I'm home."

Only a handful of English openings in the state that year. Interview one: no dice.  Interview two: sorry.  Interview three: "We would be happy if you joined us in the English department at Poultney High School."  Eleven years later and I'm still here. 

Thoughts on Teaching: 

If you're spending time reading my page, I'll assume that you're either interested in me or the work I do as it relates to your son or daughter, or maybe even as it relates to yourself.

For me, teaching is one wild dance. I fully enjoy it, yet  sometimes I perceive myself stumbling through as many steps as I feel satisfied I'm executing. Consequently, I reflect quite a lot in an attempt to understand where I'm going and how to follow whatever is leading me, with integrity. I feel like a stable person, but you wouldn't always know it by what storms inside.

My goal is to teach with consciousness. To care for the people I share time and space with at least as much as I care for the content. The question always in mind: How do I work to create an academic experience that might genuinely prove helpful, even enlightening, in some way(s) for each student, but also recognize and support their individual needs as both learners and human beings? I can't claim  to have figured that one out. The invigoration is in the trying.