I teach the math everyone loves to hate!  ALGEBRA! 

          I love to teach Algebra because it’s like being present at a birth—when someone discovers she can actually do what she’s always hated and feared, for me it’s like seeing a new life born.

          I teach using a combination of behaviorist and constructivist techniques:  precision teaching of numeracy skills presented in a context of teaching for understanding within a caring environment. 

          I work in a team environment in which my idiosyncrasies are accepted, my interests supported, my gifts used, and my weaknesses challenged.

Links:  Precision Teaching; Teaching for Understanding; Caring Learning Environments; the Beckett's Home Page. 

Research Interests:  Integrating behaviorist and constructivist philosophies into teaching; creating the experience of flow in the mathematics classroom; facilitating transformative learning in numeracy.

Favorite Books:  Zorba the Greek, Nikos Kazantzakis; Contact, Carl Sagan; Be Here Now, Ram Dass; How to Know God: The Soul's Journey into the Mystery of Mysteries, Deepak Chopra; Personal Approach to Teaching:  Beliefs That Make a Difference, Arthur W. Combs; Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being, George Lakoff, Rafael E. Nunez; Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hofstadter; Learning Together: Children and Adults in a School Community, Barbara Rogoff (Editor), Carolyn Goodman Turkanis (Editor), Leslee Bartlett.

Hobbies:  Reading, backpacking, blues piano, photography, iguanaculture.

A Favorite Quote:

Here was just the definition of a Master that I sought.  A Master teaches essence.  When the essence is perceived, he teaches what is necessary to expand the perception.  The Wu Li Master does not speak of gravity until the student stands in wonder at the flower petal falling to the ground….He does not speak of mathematics until the student says, “There must be a way to express this more simply.”  (Pp. 8-9 in Zukav, G. (1979).  The Dancing Wu Li Masters:  An Overview of the New Physics.  New York:  Bantam.)