I have been teaching in Colorado since 1995 and started at a Middle School in the Cherry Creek School District. In my first year I was teaching on a three teacher team and assigned to teach 8th grade science as well as civics. Those first years were the most difficult and more than once my principal kindly suggested that I might want to consider another career. After three long years and a lot of trial and error, I turned the corner and became the teacher that I knew I could be.
That's not to say I'm perfect. Far from it! But I am always striving to do better, to know more, and to help students succeed.
I now teach AP World History, AP European History and a world history survey course to sophomores and seniors at a high school in Jefferson County Colorado. I'm always looking to bring current events into my classroom to show students that history is fluid and that there are changes and continuities between history of the past and the history that is being made today.
I strive to incorporate games, discussions, and simulations into my lessons as much as possible believing that students learn best through their interactions and through their own experiences.
I enjoy the Zen of fly fishing, playing guitar, and spending time in the Colorado outdoors with my wife and two boys. I also spend way too much time playing NFL Fantasy Football.
There is actually an interesting story about this poster.
It was created by an innovative and enterprising student in my AP European History class, with apparently too much time on his hands and not enough homework to do in his Euro class. He thought it would be funny to photo shop a picture of me onto, what I only can describe as a Maoist propaganda poster, with a few of my favorite classroom tokens. The Arby's oven mitt acts as my classroom oracle, the Buddha statue sits contently in the corner of my classroom, and the 'Big T' refers to my shameless addiction to NFL Fantasy Football. Lastly, the 'How you doin' is also how I greet my students everyday in my cheesy Bronx accent. Sad, I know.
As if that were not enough, he and other students in the class, invented the religion of 'Thayerism' based on a few of my 'tenants' (it will catch on, we have T-shirts!). They also created a Facebook page of Thayerism that you can check out if you are really interested. My disclaimer is that I'm not affiliated nor a member of that site and their humor is all their own. (I've kept my distance in the tradition of Jesus, Buddha, and Muhammad who were also not members of their own Facebook fan clubs.)