• I was interviewed for a sound bite on “learning families” and the video can be found here.

Jan 2012

• My colleague Danny Medved and I redesigned our school’s study hall to be more forward-looking and data driven. You can read the writeup  on page 2 of the Teacher Leadership Newsletter or learn more about Teacher Leadership Academy.

July 2011

• I’m speaking on using free / open source technology tools in the classroom at the Colorado Language Arts Society Regional Conference on Sat, 9/24.
• I met with Selamawit Ghebremeskel from South HS while in California at the AVID summer institute in Sacramento.

May 2011

• My 8th grade student won the National Campaign to Stop Violence, “Do the Write Thing” contest. He and I will be traveling to Washington D.C. in July as Ambassadors. He’ll have the opportunity to present his views on youth violence to such national leaders as the Secretary of Education, the Secretary of the Interior, the Attorney General of the United States, the Administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and Members of the Congress. Here’s a behind the scenes look at his poem. And, here’s the school’s press release.
• I’ve been appointed Language Arts teacher at High Tech Early College where I will design a school-wide reading initiative and also teach college-level courses

April 2011

• Four of my 8th grade students are semi-finalists for the Do the Write Thing contest and will attend the annual awards dinner on Wednesday, May 11, 2011, from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. at the Mile High Station in Denver.
• A student I mentor at the high school has been awarded the Sach’s Foundation scholarship.

March 2011

• I was asked to give a professional development talk on using Google Apps for the Middle Schooler, at Aurora South Middle School.
• My colleague, Lisa Baez, and I wrote a proposal for the Annual NCTE conference. It has been accepted. See you in Chicago this year. Our talk: Te(a)ch-nology in the Urban Language Arts Classroom.

February 2011

• My fellow TCs and I have the backpack for kids program up and running! We’ve partnered with the Food Bank of the Rockies and we were written up here in the PDS spotlight.

I currently teach Language Arts, which is what they call English these days, at High Tech Early College, an academy that emphasizes the relationships between business, industry, and technology.

I also consult for Colorado education non-profits where I design websites to intersect education policy with new and traditional media.

I have designed ESL curricula for Wuhan Textile University in China, and, together with my team, built the prototype for DexKnows.

Down at the bottom you’ll see some websites I’ve created. On the right are some other links. Feel free to send me an email.

Some of my most recent work has been with Great Education Colorado and the Colorado PTA (COPTA). I have also consulted for and advised the University of Colorado’s Rose Hospital Graduate Residency Program, the Put Kids First Coalition, the Campaign for HCR1002 and SCR002 (DECIDE), and I’m a member of the Urban Education program at the University of Colorado Denver.

I graduated from a public high school in New York, hold degrees from public universities, I’ve facilitated research for public interest research groups, and I enjoy Colorado’s open space and other public parks.

When the books are closed, the classroom empty, and the computer unplugged, I like nothing more than to hike to the tops of mountains and fall asleep in the sunshine.

This is the third time I’ve experienced this situation: pet is “lost”, owners scour neighborhood, pet is hiding in house. (Or, to be fair in most recent case, stuck). Advice? You betcha.

If you pet is missing, and you’ve already looked in all the normal spots, WHILE other people are scouring the neighborhood, go into each room in your house, call the pet’s name with normal tone or clucks, or what not. Be patient and quiet, wait. Listen for footsteps above you (cats like to get above dropped ceilings) or listen for whimpering in strange places (bugle pups can get stuck under reclining couches). You never know. If you don’t find the pet indoors after repeating these steps in EACH room, join the outdoor team. And good luck.

File under: the internets

My Mile Marker . com is a great way to keep track of your car’s fuel economy (or lack thereof). I know these things can be accomplished in spreadsheets, but it’s nice to have someone else take the headache out of it for you, plus there are neat graphs to view once you establish your MPG (ie, fill your tank more than once, consecutively). And, we all know that if your MPG is decreasing, something is wrong with your car. So give it a go, and help the planet a bit while you’re at it!

Go There!>>

If you can read this, I’m not impressed. If you can buy me one of these, I will be your friend for life.

Thus, instead of the computer, I decided to look into my lighting habits. Ironically, on the same day that I decided to add a few low-impact CFL bulbs to our lighting repertoire, Snopes.com (the post-humous-Faulkner-character’s eponymous site of urban legends) decided to run an article [link contains popups] on the bulbs’ mercury content. Whew, that was a wordy sentence. The short story? The site found no extreme danger of mercury, and with an average savings of around $45.00 / year it is one of three things I’m working on to save a few nickels per kilowatt hour. The others? Unplugging the wine fridge until company comes, splicing in a programmable thermostat, and trying to make the most of Great Stuff, which truly is great stuff.

Last night, as a birthday present, Lisa took me to see Paul Simon. The most salient aspect of the experience in my mind? Numbers.

0 – The number of people sitting down during favorites (which really are all songs that aren’t slow)

1 – Simon and Garfunkel were one of the first acts to use ethnic names as title of their pop group (both Simon and Garfunkel are Jewish names).

2 – The number of songs played from the days of Simon & Garfunkel (an almost unrecognizable version of Mrs. Robinson), which in my opinion, is better than it is with Garfunkel.

3 – The number of times he said something to the audience (like most good performers, he lets his music do the speaking).

4 – Count ‘em, yes, FOUR encores. 1 – Call me Al, 2 – 5 songs 3 – Bridge Over Troubled Water and 3 more , 4th – just Paul and his guitar.

65 – Paul Simon is 65 years old. And he rocks. His voice is still exactly as it sounds on the albums. Exactly as it sounds in The Graduate, and his songs are imbued with life and benefit from a harder edge exemplified on his new album, Surprise.

Paul Simon, live, around the corner from our house, was absolutely the best live music experience of my life.