I live in southern California in a small town on the edge of the desert. My wife and I home school our two wonderfully kind, good hearted, boys. We are part of a larger home school association that participates in park days, group sport/PE days, curriculum exchanges, and cooperative teaching. To accomplish this we live a pretty Spartan life style and do with out many luxuries such as cable TV, smart phones,  etc and we enjoy the dollar movie theatre.

I work with the Inland Regional Center as a Case Manager where I help advocate for supports and services for kids with developmental disabilities in the local school districts.

Prior to that I worked for AES as a Dean of Students, lead teacher, and teacher trainer at a small NPS high School. While at Rio Rancho I became a Direct Instruction convert about 15 years ago (back when DI was considered a dirty word in the education departments at CSUSB). I attended many conferences up in Eugene, Oregon (great micro brewery town) for DI instruction. I find it lends itself well to the Socratic seminar and oral history traditions.

I took my BA in History with a Minor in Astronomy at the College of Charleston, SC. I was President of the History Club and a member of the Phi Alpha Theta National history Honor Society through the Omega-Phi Chapter.

Prior to that I was a US Marine. I served form 1989-1993 during the First Gulf War. Being a Marine has always been a formative part of my life. Back then I was asked by a reporter if I was happy to be home after the war ended and I replied that I believed our failure to finish the job properly would cause latter generations of American's to bleed unnecessarily. One of the main reasons I want to teach history is because successive generations of American's are going to find themselves in harms way in other parts of the world and I think it is important that these kids understand what came before them and why it came to be so that they understand their place in the world and how other cultures see us as well. The story of humanity must be taught from many perspectives and truths but ultimately we must choose which perspective we choose to serve.

Task force Grizzly:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3rd_Battalion_7th_Marines