I hope you are as excited as I am for the school year to begin. I am always surprised by how time flies - the summer has flown by and if history holds, I will be thinking in May how quickly the school year has flown by. If you do not know me, you will quickly learn I am a pretty enthusiastic guy about my "job" and life in general. I hope that you will share that enthusiasm with me. I hope to get to know each of you throughout the year, or in the case of those I have had before, get to know you better. My ultimate goal is to help you be successful in the classroom as well as out. You do not have to share any more than what you wish with me, but I do like to let my students in on who I am. I believe it helps students to see their teachers as people, which I realize can be a challenge.
I had a busy summer. The highlight was when my oldest son, Daniel, married a wonderful girl from
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| Daniel and Courtney |
Washington, Missouri. He is a civil engineer in Kansas City and is completing his masters degree while working full time and a newlywed. He has always been one to lead a very full life. His wife, Courtney, is a pharmacy major and will finish her education at the end of this year. Our best wedding present to them was one of our three dogs - Wilson. Courtney already had a cat. Wilson is a "pound puppy" who my youngest son, David, named after the volleyball in the Tom Hanks movie, "Catsaway."
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| David with his Fly Rod |
David is now a third year college student at the greatest university, by FAR, Mizzou. He has been a journalism major, but is seriously exploring a major change to forestry. He shares our family love for the outdoors, and does quite a lot of writing about it -
website, blog, etc. His journalism major was a reflection of his passion for writing, but has begun to rethink whether that direction is the right one for him. He is very blessed in that while Mizzou has such a great J-school, their forestry school is almost as well-recognized across the nation.
My wife, Laura, is a fifth grade teacher in Washington, Missouri. In case you are wondering, we live
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| Laura (center) |
between Washington and O'Fallon in a community called Lake Sherwood. She drives about 30 minutes each way - I drive about 45 minutes. Laura has taught just about every elementary grade level, and even taught in a one-room school when we lived in Alaska. Laura and I have been married for 27 years!
I turned 50 this summer...I am OLD! I was born in Colorado and raised in Alaska. I met Laura at Mizzou.
We lived in "Bush Alaska" for several years before moving first to western Colorado, and then to Missouri in 1998. I started at North in the 1999-2000 school year. Besides family, I deeply enjoy doing just about anything outdoors - hunting, fishing, camping, etc. I also write a lot about the outdoors via several blogs as
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David and I on a mountaintop...you could not possibly
guess where! |
well as out website (family-outdoors.com). Many my age in the teaching profession are close to retirement - due to my having taught in
several states I am a few years behind them. I could contemplate doing so in eight years, but cannot imagine wanting to do so.
I have not said much about my passion for math, but you will experience that for yourself. I hope it will be contagious to you, and further, if you have a negative view of the discipline coming in, I simply request that you maintain an open mind. I believe deeply that each of you are entirely capable of at a minimum, becoming very competent thinkers.
Well, that's about it for now. I will be handing out a beginning of the year newsletter and will cover classroom stuff more there. Again, I look forward to a great year.
