Shameless self-promotion

Who am I, what gives me the gumption to write this, and why should you care what I say about education?

Fair questions all. Let’s start with the last one first. Why should you care? I could offer up genealogies or testimonials or credentials (see below) — heck, this being education, I probably should offer up credentials as the gold coin of the realm — but really, the reason you should care is that what I say makes sense to you. If it doesn’t make sense, ignore it and ignore me. Teaching remains much more an art than a science and I am surely still in my journeyman phase. (Or should that be “journeyman stage”? For some reason, educators love the word “stage”.)

Who am I? I am a teacher of Honors Physics and AP Physics at a prep school in New Jersey. (I hasten to add, this blog is not officially connected to, endorsed by, or even known to the School.) I just finished my eighth year at the school, seven of them living on campus. Before that I taught for two years at a Catholic high school just outside of Philadelphia, handling pretty much the same subjects. Prior to that I did four years at a moderately-well-known West Coast university, first as a doctoral student in astrophysics and then, when I figured out how little I liked graduate research, as a terminal masters student in the School of Education.

Just recently, at the commencement ceremony on June 2, I was named as the first-ever recipient of the School’s Distinguished Faculty Endowed Chair. There are lots of very gratifying phrases attached to the award — “an inspiring master teacher as viewed by peers and students”; “a person who is energetic, passionate, and invovled with students and the School beyond the classroom”; “a scholar with deep understanding in his discipline”. Also, the award comes with an (almost) embarrassing gob of cash and a medallion large enough to use as a bola in hunting wild game.

But mostly it comes with the moral authority to keep being loud and unrelenting in my pontificating about the sorry state of education (hence this blog). Those who know me will tell you that I surely didn’t need such justification. I have always been willing to share my opinion, asked or not. But it’s nice to have the medallion to duck behind when people fire back.

So that takes care of the credentialling. Oh, the genealogies? Well, my mother was a public school teacher for 22 years in the New York City public school teacher. My father, though he wound up a social worker, was also always a teacher and counselor. One of my sisters teaches part-time at St. John’s University; my other sister was a public school teacher before taking a job in administration at St. John’s as well. My uncle has taken up teaching as his second career. And my great uncle, for whom I am named, was a fantastic teacher with the Christian Brothers. So you can see, teaching is sort of in my genes and in my blood.

Only time will tell if that will help this be any good. 🙂