About Me
Not all of us who wander are lost. But occasionally we are! As a kid from a Maryland suburb, I never could have imagined where I eventually would end up. Within 24 hours of walking across the graduation stage at Colgate University with a bachelor's degree in Geology in hand, I found myself entering my new seasonal home at the Exit Glacier Guides shop beneath the midnight sun of Seward, Alaska. This summer position as a mountaineering guide became my anchoring point for the seven years that followed. I worked many jobs in the offseasons, but some fun highlights include employment as a professional geoscientist in Texas, a beverage canning line worker in Colorado, and eventually the Assistant Director of a college outdoor education program for three years in upstate New York. With the arrival of a serious partner (now my fiance!) came the increasing desire to create a more consistent community and find a place to call home. As some might say, “It was time to settle down.”
The appeal of teaching people the wonders of the natural world had always been there for me. In many ways, science teaching was a natural fit. It became more than that in recent years as I reflected on what I could do to give back with the immense privilege that I was born into. After a year of substitute teaching in the Tucson, Arizona public school classrooms, I knew this career path would be the way I could work to make my little pocket of the world a little more equitable. While the seventy degree and sunny winters of AZ were great, I recognized that doing this work the way I hoped to would only be possible in schools that truly supported the development of the whole student and maintained a strong connection to their local community. From across the country, I had heard tales about a brave little state doing just that.
Enter Vermont! In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, I began a Master’s of Arts in Teaching at UVM, completing my student teaching right here at Mt. Abe (shout out to mentor, Dana DeWitt!). Despite the challenges of the hybrid taught 2020-21 school year, I could see the strength of the 5 Towns community and how deeply Mt. Abe educators cared for their students. When a science position opened in the middle school at the end of the year, there was no doubt where I wanted to begin my teaching career. My interview, which was conducted from the front seat of my parked car somewhere near the US/Saskatchewan border during my annual pilgrimage up to Alaska, was somehow not enough to scare off our administrators. So here I am now, a newly minted middle school science teacher on Team Summit, an enthusiastic Vermont resident, a recently engaged man, and a father to a beautiful kitten named Sonora, feeling significantly less “lost” than I have in a while. See you out on the Green Mountain trails, slopes, rivers, and cliffs as we explore this wondrous place we get to call home!
