I'm currently heading into in my 12th year at The Roxbury Latin School in West Roxbury, MA - my 7th as the Director of the IDEA Lab (Invention, Design, Engineering and Art). I teach two sections of a required 9th grade course called Math-Science Investigations, a project-driven STEAM course that my colleagues and I designed from the ground up, a 7th grade technology survey course (bits and bytes to networks and the Internet), and 8th and 10th grade woodworking electives. I'm in the midst of a Master in Arts in Educational Technology (MAET) program at Michigan State University. Much of the content that I've generated for that program is available from the Michigan State: MAET link above. I'm passionate about the effective use of technology to enable creation, exploration, and problem solving, and I'm a firm believer in teacher-as-"do"er.
Outside of the classroom, my wife and I love being a part of the growth and development of our two sweet boys (3 and 1), and can most often be found in the Arnold Arboretum - an incredible gem of a park/museum/working laboratory, and our boys' surrogate back yard. Whenever there's a break in the family action, I love to dig into my long and always growing list of ongoing projects (home improvement, woodworking, vegetable gardening, tree propagation, bread baking, food preserving, cider pressing & fermenting, etc...). I also sing with a vocal band called Similar Jones, which serves as the current outlet for my lifelong passion for creating music.
My parallel, ongoing, hopefully life-long endeavor (which has its own growing list of projects) is the development of Walker Woods - the roughly 40 acres of woodland in Western Massachusetts that I'm slowly and steadily taming into a someday homestead. Hobbies and interests in "the woods" include forest management, off-grid power systems, lumber milling, orchards and cider, sustainable living, passive house design and construction, growing and raising food, wildlife observing, tree-house building, fresh air breathing, and swimming hole splashing.
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Spring 2020
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Summer 2020