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My Philosophy: I believe that every student can and should learn to their full potential so that they can be fully prepared to pursue their dreams, and that students do best when they learn the skills for success as well as academic content.
My Background: I have a little bit of an odd background for a professional educator. I actually started my working life as a professional musician, after graduating from the University of Virginia with a history degree in the mid-1980's. I performed and traveled throughout the U.S., Caribbean and Central America for about 8 years, before deciding to go into teaching in the early 1990's.
My first teaching position was at Orange County High School, where I taught World and U.S. History and U.S. Government. That's when I began to get interested in leadership, so went back to school to George Mason University, where I achieved a Master's Degree in Education Leadership in 2000.
Yeah... I used to have hair.
After teaching for several years and serving as Chair of the Social Studies department in Orange, I was hired as an Assistant Principal at OCHS. One of my duties was to work with a new program called "Blue Ridge Virtual Governor's School," and I supervised the BRVGS classes at OCHS when the program first started up.
After serving as an assistant principal at OCHS, I was hired to be Principal of Madison County High School, where I served from 2001-2005. I am proud to say that MCHS achieved full accreditation status during my time there. I also started the MCHS Guitar Club, which had over a 100 members and produced a number of "Battle of the Bands" shows and other and club concerts. When I left MCHS, the local newspaper's main question was, "Who will lead the Guitar Club?"
In 2005, I was offered the opportunity to apply for the position of Director of BRVGS. With my prior experience with the program, and knowing many of the people who worked with the program across the member school divisions, I was really pleased to come to work with BRVGS. You can see more about what I actually do as Director on the XXXXXX page.
After 15 years as Director (I am now the longest-serving Governor's School Director in Virginia), I still love every day of working with BRVGS students and staff. We have expanded from around 290 students and 4 core courses to nearly 700 students and over 20 courses in the past 15 year, and I can't wait to see what else our students can accomplish in the upcoming future!
Outside of my time working for BRVGS, I still play music professionally across central Virginia twenty to thirty times a year as half of the acoustic duo "Scuffletown."
I also work as a leadership and educational consultant on a part-time basis. I work regularly with the Federal Executive Institute in Charlottesville, teaching leadership workshops, and I also teach curriculum and education leadership courses for the University of Mary Washington's Graduate School of Education.
When I am not working or playing music, I love to sail my 45-year old sailboat Sundown with my wife Lisa, who is a special educator at Liberty High School in Fauquier County, and with our rescued Catahoula Leopard dog Joey.
We currently live in Orange County, but are working to restore an old house near the Rappahannock River, where we keep our boat. I also enjoy paddleboarding, reading, and spending time with friends and family.
I also love to travel, and have been to Europe around a dozen times, as well as to Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Asia. In the past few years, I have also taken groups of BRVGS students to China and to the Galapagos Islands.
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