Career Experience:

I have been working in education in some capacity since 2001 and will now be entering my 26th year in education in September, 2024.  Over the course of my career I have worked as a Social Studies teacher (grades 5-12) and English teacher (grades 9-11).  

I have a very eclectic background in education and have worked in rural, urban and suburban school districts.  I also spent a year living in Sarajevo, Bosnia where I taught English as a Second Language (ESL) at a private school where I taught students who ranged in age from 12-50.  

Along with teaching I have also worked as a summer camp counselor, baseball coach, personal trainer, chess club adviser, movie club adviser, conducted the trivia bowl, and was a student mentor, teacher mentor and curriculum adviser. I have also been a member of various school wide improvement and curriculum committees.

I found my cat Chubby in my back yard back in March 2021.  He was looking very skinny and malnourished but was very friendly and so my wife and I decided to adopt him.  We took him to the vet, got him his vaccinations, some medicine and he has been living with us ever since.  

I named him Chubby to be ironic considering how skinny and thin he was when we found him.  However, over the years he has put on some weight and now lives up to his name.

My wife and I had a second cat, Cece, that sadly passed away over the summer of 2023.  For the first few weeks of September 2023 my wife had been asking me if we could get a new cat.  I pick my wife up from her work everyday.  On September 14th, 2023 I was going to surprise her by picking her up and already have the cat carrier in our car so we could go right to the animal shelter to pick up a new cat.  As hard as this may be to believe, when I got home from work on the 14th, sitting outside of my house, meowing at me, was a cat.

I went in my house and then brought her out some food and water and sat down on my steps and pet her for a few minutes.  She ate some food and then just laid down.  She did not have a collar and so I took her to a veterinarian to see if she had a microchip in her so we could find her owners.  She had no microchip.  I asked the veterinarian to examine her to see if she was healthy.  She had some flees and tapeworms which is a sign she had been living outside for some time.  The doctor cleaned her up, gave her some medicine along with her vaccinations and I took her home.  Actually, I first took her to pick up my wife from work who could not believe it when she got into the car.

So, on the day I was going to take my wife to get a new cat, a new cat literally just showed up at our house.

Here is our cat Luna.

A few of my fiction favorites:

And what about movies you may ask?  Some of my alltime favorites include:

• Every morning when I get up, I don't drink a cup of coffee, I drink a cup of nails.

• The #1 export of the U.S. is oil.  The #1 export of Mr. McManus is pain.

• I can stand in one place faster than you can run.

• I do not use spellcheck.  If I "misspell" a word, the Oxford-English dictionary changes the spelling.

• When I do pushups I don't push up, instead I push the entire world down.

• While I cannot walk on water, I can swim through land.

• I can beat anyone at the game of Connect Four in just three moves.

• Studies have shown that 50% of adults are afraid of the dark.  The same studies have shown that 100% of the dark is afraid of Mr. McManus.  

• I participated in a scientific study and doctors found that my tears can cure cancer.  The bad news is I never cry.

• I was once hiking out West and got bit by a rattlesnake and after 5 hours of agonizing pain the rattlesnake died.

• The only word in the English language that rhymes with orange is Mr. McManus.

• Time waits for no man, unless that man is Mr. McManus.

• My name, as it appears on my birth certificate, is Switchblade Killingsworth.   My name was changed to Mr. McManus because it sounds tougher.

• A dinosaur once looked at me the wrong way, I think you know the rest.

• In the game of Rock - Paper - Scissors...Paper beats rock, rock beats scissors, and scissors beats paper but Mr. McManus beats all three.

• I can dribble a bowling ball. 

• I have counted to infinity....twice.

• I have to type everything I would otherwise write because when I write I make the paper bleed.

• I did not do well in chemistry class because I do not believe in the periodic table of the elements.  The only element that I believe in is the element of surprise.

• I have a trophy for beating the sun in a staring contest.

• During the pandemic, the city of Philadelphia mandated that all teachers get a covid-19 vaccination.  It was also mandated that covid-19 get a Mr. McManus vaccination.

• I am not worried about gas prices going up.  I never have to put gas in my car.  My car runs on fear.

• There has never been a hurricane named Mr. McManus because it would have destroyed everything.

• I once gave an uppercut punch to a horse.  That's why we now have giraffes.

• I don't need scientists to tell me that we are living in an ever expanding universe that is expanding at increasing speed.  I knew this already because it is only natural that everything is trying to get away from me as fast as possible out of fear.