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About Me

I firmly believe that one of the keys to being a good educator, especially of secondary students, is being real and honest with my students; if I'm just someone talking at them, there is no personal connection and both my work and their's will suffer. This page is to give you a taste of who I am and to a large degree the personality that my students see and interact with.

Mt Ranier, Washington

Life

I grew up about 20 miles north of Chicago in a town called Arlington Heights (home to one of the best libraries in the country according to Library Journal). Throughout my childhood I was an active member of the Boy Scouts of America, attaining the rank of Eagle Scout in 2006. My family placed a big focus on vacationing together each summer, leading us to camping across the country and traveling to Europe a couple of times. My dad is giant history nerd, my mom is an avid reader and teacher, and my little sister is something I can't quite explain that involves conservation and traveling (she also went to U of M for grad school which is... unfortunate). This is all to say I am a product of my environment and my family.

Education

I went to a small-ish private grade and middle school, but jumped at the opportunity to attend my local high school, John Hersey High School. It was there that I lucked into meeting a mentor of sorts in my sophomore and junior year AP history teacher- I had enjoyed history before, but he opened my eyes to the possibilities of teaching it in all of its nuanced glory. High School saw me take every AP Social Studies and English class I could wedge into my schedule, play volleyball, play on and eventually captain our Scholastic Bowl Team(with whom I now compete as a pretty good Pub Trivia team), and win the Department Social Studies award.

Following Hersey, I enrolled at Michigan State (a school I initially visited solely as a favor to one of my dad's co-workers). At Michigan State I majored in History and minored in Political Science. Following graduation, I moved to Chicago for MSU's rigorous student teaching program on the South Side of the city; a trial by fire, but something I would not change for the world.

Career

After student teaching, I took up substitute teaching in my old school district, essentially falling into the role of department substitute at my alma mater. While not the ideal job, it did give me the opportunity to teach every social studies subject under the sun, develop my skills among a staff that had known me for years and wanted to help. While at Hersey I also co-coached the Varsity Scholastic Bowl, which became one of the most rewarding things I have ever done. Following substitute teaching, I spent two years as a paraprofessional and intermittent co-teacher at a middle school in the Northern Chicago Suburbs.

For the Last two years, I have been teaching American Government at Helena High School in Helena, Montana. After years of professional walkabout, I have finally found my home- working with an engaged and endlessly kind and cooperative staff that is more community and workspace.

Some baby

MSU's Chicago Public Schools Secondary Ed Cohort 2011-12

2013 Scholastic Bowl Team

recreating DaVinci's "The Last Supper", because that's how Scholastic Bowl Teams do.

2007 Scholastic Bowl team, now a Pub Trivia team. Still good.

Hobbies

Movies

Working one summer in college with friend, we came across a book called "1001 Movies to See Before You Die", as luck would have it, that library I talked about above also has one of the biggest foreign language film collections in the country and NetFlix's digital footprint had recently debuted, so I decided to "beat" the book. Over the next 5 or 6 years, I sought out every film on the list, no matter how obscure, and methodically checked off each and every one. Sometimes the movies were revelatory (Ran, Jaws, Irreversible, The Godfather) and sometimes they were terrible (The Asthenic Syndrome, War Horse, Crash, Avatar), but they combined to instill me with a deep appreciation of films of all sorts and a strong drive to see everything. I currently use this Letterboxd account to review, however briefly, everything I see or have ever seen( currently about 4,500 films and shorts). The hobby works on its own as something I enjoy doing, but I have also discovered it is a great way to engage with students; I am regularly asked for my opinions on movies (Spirited Away: Good, Transformers: Terrible) or for recommendations. I have become "the movie teacher" and will have students utterly unknown to me come in to my class at lunch to ask questions or opinions. Movies started as a lark and have become so much more.

Hiking

Those family vacations we went on to Olympic National Park, or Rocky Mountain, or The Great Smokey Mountains felt like a chore to my younger self ( I was called "1/4 Mile Bob"because I always complained incessantly for the first 1/4 mile of every hike) and now I can't imagine life without hiking. I've backpacked in Alaska, climbed Mt Washington, and am the holder of an NPS membership. Being a Montanan means I have easy access to the great outdoors- a gift I take regular advantage of. If you're coming out west let me know and I can give you a disturbingly large amount of hiking ideas.

Movie Stats as of 6/14/19

Ran, the best movie ever

Highline Trail, Glacier National Park, MT

Concerts

At age 19, my best friend and I, along with my little sister and her best friend decided to attend Lollapalooza '09 in Chicago. After a great 3 days of concertgoing we jokingly declared we would do it for the next 10 years. It turns out that it wasn't a joke. Over the next decade we attended at least one music festival every year, from Chicago, to Manchester, Tennessee, to George, Washington. The years saw other members join our "festival fam", over those years, the festivals became more about the family than the bands, so that this year, after a decade of non-stop festival-ing (it's a word) when we called a pause, nobody saw it as an end. We still populate the same Facebook group as we did 10 years ago, but now we use it to share concerts we've attended in small groups or bands we've stumbled across. Much like the movies, this hobby has migrated to my teaching life, with students asking for musical recommendations and sharing them with me in return.

Books

I didn't just use that Library for movies, though. The Arlington Heights Memorial Library was never more than a 10 minute bike ride from my home as I grew up and my high school bus dropped me off there each day after school. That ease of access, as well as my parents' endless encouragement to read created a voracious reader. At my current teaching post, I am a member of a staff book club that we use to both expand our literary horizons, but also to find works that will do the same for our students (the most popular book on my classroom bookshelf is Shea Serrano's "The Rap Yearbook"- the multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro- not so much.

If you'd like yo see what I am reading or have read in the past, please check out this GoodReads page.