My interest in teaching is threefold. First, I enjoy working with academic knowledge, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. It is in academia and theoretical understanding that we comprehend and appreciate the world and ourselves, and it is in history in particular that we see our origins and present selves in context. Second, I like interacting with people and knowledge. In particular, I am enthusiastic about working with adolescents as they develop their understandings of content subjects and themselves. Finally, education remains the great avenue to achievable social change. Schools and teachers have a unique capability to create thoughtful, engaged citizens able to produce a more caring, more tolerant society.
My educational philosophy has three key principles. First, I call for respect. I am not doing my job if I am not respecting my students, whether in the form of talking to them as equals or making sure that they remain part of an efficient, productive, and manageable class. Second, variety is essential to good lesson and unit execution. People are not designed to complete the same task repeatedly. Rather, students and teachers function better when they use a diverse array of methods--lectures, discussions, presentations, worksheets, projects, cooperative learning, and graphic organizers--in an ever-creative rotation. Finally, the good teacher is willing to experiment, to dare, and to try new methods in the classroom. I have always felt that the best teacher is also a student.
I have a long background in the technological field. I have been using computers in some capacity all of my life, for both work and personal pursuits. I am familiar with Mac and Windows Operating Systems, Microsoft Office, email, and Internet browsers. I also have more specialized experience working with professional programs for classified advertising, retail point-of-sale transactions, and student grading. I completed courses in both computer theory and Unix at UCSC, and study educational technology as part of my credential program at CSUS.
I also have Internet experience. I began my first GeoCities page in 2000, and soon thereafter built my first page in HTML. I have since completed several other pages using both HTML and coding software.