Uncommon Beginnings

I sat on the idea of having some sort of internet presence outside of the official channels of my job for some time now, but I never really knew where to start, or maybe even why to start. Here’s what I do know. I’m a classroom teacher, 8th grade Civics and Economics to be exact, and I run an interdisciplinary sustainability project with my students. Oh, and I’m in the process of having a bunch of them turn a decommissioned school bus that runs on vegetable oil into a mobile sustainability classroom. I know that I like running sustainability projects and building buses much more than I like talking about civics. I also know that the conventional wisdom says I shouldn’t even be here. I was not a good high school student. It took me forever to get my college degrees. I spent more time playing drums in punk bands than I did studying or planning for any sort of future, and yet here I am with a wife and a child and a career and a mortgage and everything. I ended up following a pretty traditional educational pathway in the end because that was the straightest line to take to get to the goal I had in mind, which was to be a classroom teacher. Along the way, however, I was blessed to meet tons of people who had achieved some level of success (whatever that truly means) by following pathways that were very non-traditional. These people spent some time in classrooms, to be sure, but they spent much more time out in the field following their passions, trying, failing, trying again, and ultimately reaching a point where they get to live their passions daily. This webpage and all of its associated content is meant to be a celebration of those people and those pathways. It is in no way meant to decry the traditional educational model or to undo it. What I am here for is hopefully to be a light in the dark that illuminates multiple pathways so that more of us can find a road that leads us to our authentic selves. I look forward to your sharing this journey with me.