About Me

Who am I?

Well you can find me on Facebook here if you like.

This is not intended to be a CURRICULUM VITAE, but rather a brief rambling of some of my experiences and how I got to where I am.

Firstly I wish to state that I am a Christian and that I truly love Jesus Christ and live my life in the hope that I can be a good example of what Jesus would like us to be. (You can read my personal testimony here).

I have two parts to my career at present, I am currently employed by Stirling High School in East London as a Music Teacher and IT Manager.

As teaching is primary function at the school, I will divulge the musical side of my life.

I am registered with SACE (South African Council for Educators) as a music teacher. (The South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) rate my musical experience during my performance career as being equal to a 5 year degree). I also qualified as a Head Musician 2nd Leg (Chief Musician) in the SANDF roughly equal to a combined teachers and performers licentiate at the time.

While concentrating primarily on my performance career when living in Pretoria, I taught at the Centurion High School Music Centre. I also taught privately for ten years prior to moving back to East London in 1999 to begin teaching part time at Stirling High School and Hudson Park High School.

I performed with the then National Symphony Orchestra, Transvaal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Namibia National Symphony Orchestra whilst working full time for the SANDF.

During this time I was first in the Light Horse Band as principal trumpet. Then I was transferred to the SA Army Senior Staff Band in Pretoria after which I joined the newly formed SA Army Chamber Orchestra. Later I became acting Band Sergeant Major of the School of Military Music and subsequently became the acting Band Master of the Far North Command Staff Band.

During this time I had the privilege to perform at many historical occasions in this country, and for many international figures a few of these are:

• • • Independence of Namibia - I played the Retreat when the South African Flag was lowered for the last time in Windhoek at the handing over ceremony.

    • The handing over of Walvis Bay to Namibia.

    • The Inauguration of President Mandela.

    • for the Pope on his visit to South Africa

    • HM Queen Beatrice of The Netherlands

    • President of France Jacques Shirak

    • Mrs Clinton of the USA and many more ...

The highlights in my performing career are without a doubt Performing under Doctor Frederick Fennel of the famous Eastman Wind Ensemble in the USA and Maestro Leslie Dunner, the principal conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. I have also performed as a soloist, in bands, orchestras and chamber groups throughout South Africa and Namibia.

Throughout this period I focused mainly on Classical music and quite frankly did not have any time for JAZZ. Soon after beginning to teach at Stirling High School I saw the benefits in my students of learning to play JAZZ and as such I have fallen in love with JAZZ. I am surely not the worlds greatest JAZZ musician, by any stretch of the imagination, but I love trying and having fun with my students all the same :-) I focus on playing worship music primarily though as my first choice.

I have always had a self contained passion, but now that I am teaching I have found an extended passion in my students. One cannot believe how wonderful it is to see one's students do well or even just get that note which they could not get before they came into a lesson. This feeling far out ways the feeling of my own achievements.

I believe very strongly in what we are doing with JAZZ education and the National Youth Jazz Festival. I have had the privilege to be part of the organizing team of this festival and hope to see it continue to grow every year as it has been doing.

On the IT side of my life I have been employed as the IT Manager at the school since late 1999.

When I started, the school already had a reputation of being the IT leader in the area.

The school had only a few '486' computers for staff and 2 computer labs; 1 consisting of 40 '486s' running Windows 3.11 and lantastic, with a BNC backbone, and 1 lab with 10 x '286' workstations running DOS off floppy drives.

The school only had one dialup Internet connection for staff and one for students with no servers. Of course this does not sound like much now, but then it was quite advanced as schools went.

We have developed the system over the years to what we have now. Currently we run a Fiber Optic backbone with network points in every office and classroom. We have Interactive Whiteboards in classrooms, 3 computer labs running 40 workstations in each. Rough numbers would be close to 200 networked devices all Internet ready throughout the staff, student and hostel networks.

We currently have a server farm consisting of 11 VMWare Virtual servers and 4 Physical servers running the various systems which we use all protected by a Fortigate Firewall. We use Veeam as a backup solution and are considered to be a success story by them.

But those are just machines! As I previously stated my passion is my students and so the computer side of my job is no different. I started a networking society in 2000 and it has grown each year. In this society, the students run and maintain the network. They are involved in every aspect of the networks day to day running including the research of new technology and the implementation of such projects as the school continues to grow. We attend various IT related road shows when possible and as such hold the name of the school high in the IT Community.

The society has a good reputation and periodically members of the society have been offered learnerships by local IT Companies.

I believe in Stirling High School as there is a place for every single student to shine, not just the top achievers, but every single student, should they choose to take up the challenge. The networking society is just a small part of that.

When I moved back to East London I had no intention of going into teaching, my involvement at Stirling has changed that for me and I would have it no other way!!!