Hello, students and parents!

I am so happy to teach 6th, 7th, and 8th grades English language arts and 6th grade socials studies at the Grand Canyon School!

Here's a little about me:

I was born in California and lived there with my family until I was almost thirteen; that is when we moved to Gilbert, Arizona. I am the youngest of five kids and have two older brothers and two older sisters.

I attended middle school and high school in Gilbert, but honestly, I was not a good student. :-/ I was really into playing guitar, and I played in several bands back then. My world revolved around music into my early twenties, until I got married to a beautiful girl named Stephanie. *That was sixteen years ago, by the way!

I finally became serious about my education when I was twenty-four, and I found myself falling in love with linguistics (i.e the study of language) and teaching English to people from other parts of the world. My wife and I were fortunate enough to travel to different countries where we learned about other cultures and different worldviews. In fact, we used to be really serious about moving abroad. I graduated college with a Bachelors of Arts in English Linguistics and then earned a Masters of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) both at Arizona State University. Unfortunately, over the years my wife developed some chronic health problems, so we were not able to move to another country. Instead, I was able to teach English and provide social/cultural programs to international students at ASU for a few years. I switched to teaching middle school a few years back because I enjoy working with this age group! Before moving north, I taught ELA, math, and SEI (Structured English Immersion) at the Kyrene School District in the Phoenix area.

We wanted to move to Northern Arizona for the beauty and the seasons, and we're so happy to have the opportunity to live and work at the Grand Canyon. We love it here!

In my spare time, I like to hike, write songs on guitar, read, and do work on our property in Four Hills Ranch (south of Valle).

Some of my favorite books include The Hatchet (Paulsen), Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway), and The Hobbit (Tolkien).