My Profile

As a child, I lived in twelve different cities from Montreal, Quebec to Birmingham, Alabama and from Allentown, Pennsylvania to Kansas City, Missouri -- and all before the age of 17! I swore I would settle down somewhere when I grew up and NEVER move again.

But I was wrong. Moving is in my blood. You could call me a wandering Jew, I guess. My travels have taken me to Israel and the West Bank, to Jordan and Egypt, to India and China and Indonesia and Vietnam, throughout Europe, to Costa Rica and Mexico -- and now back to Southeast Asia again. I may never get everywhere, but I'll sure try!

I've also traveled many paths in my professional career, dabbling in neurobiological research and medicine (three whole MONTHS in med school, as my friends like to point out) before going through public policy school at U.C. Berkeley. The education policy bug bit me, and then a stint managing a statewide summer institute for history teachers (the California Institute for History Education) convinced me I needed to teach daily in a real classroom before doing real policy work.

I have yet to escape the classroom, and gladly so (most days, anyway). I'm now on a year's sabbatical from Horace Mann Middle School, an academic magnet school in San Francisco's Mission District, where I teach sixth-grade world history ("Ancient Societies"). I have also served as a mentor teacher in San Francisco, and have taught the Social Studies Methods class at New College of San Francisco for the past two years. I am also highly involved in several district- and state-level programs related to curriculum and standards development in the social sciences, having presented workshops in a variety of forums. I contributed extensively to the National Center for History in the School's "World History Sourcebook". I am very interested in innovative, alternative approaches to teaching world history -- in terms both of pedagogy and curriculum -- and welcome any contacts from people wishing to share ideas and thoughts. (And finally, I have a propensity to start sentences with "I" too much.)

I have many other interests and activities I participate in, but if you want to know what they are you'll have to write me.