Degrees
Experience
What do you love about teaching?
I love learning, and I love talking. Teaching allows me to combine the two. When it's good, it's sublime, like a conversation with a friend when you have something really important to say. You want to get your message across, but you also want to hear what the listener thinks. The best times I have as a teacher are when students show me something I haven't noticed before about the very thing I'm supposed to be teaching them.
What do you enjoy most about being at AHC?
(See teaching above) At AHC, I can concentrate on teaching well and encouraging my colleagues to do the same, within the context of serving the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm very fortunate. I teach the best class in the school, to the best students. Years before I knew about AHC, I was asked to speak to my daughter's public school class about India. The morning of the day I was to speak, India's most popular leader was murdered. When I spoke to the students, I wished I could lead the class prayer. That was the moment I understood how a Christian school education makes every subject more significant to the servant of God.
How did you end up becoming a teacher?
Many years ago, I was on the staff of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, a college ministry. Bible study and teaching were the things I most enjoyed. When I went back to graduate school, I had a college teaching career in mind. I taught college for a few years while still taking classes. Later, Alma Heights asked me to sign on.
How do you invest in the lives of young people outside of class?
I have 3 daughters, 2 at home and 1 in college. Between them, their friends, and their sports teammates, I've more young people in my life than the other kind.
What's the funniest thing that's ever happened in one of your classes?
(Ya had ta be there.)
Name some interesting places in the world you've visited
Semester in India, month in Japan, 4.5 years in Canada
Name some interesting jobs you had before you became a teacher
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship staff; research associate in biochemistry; expert witness on American religion in Alameda County Superior Court
What's changed most since you were in high school?
The pervasiveness of computer technology is the most noticeable, but the most IMPORTANT change has been the decline of journalism and literature and the triumph of electronic media.
Why do you teach American Studies?
Sure, American history and literature SHOULD be taught at the same time, but the real inspiration for the course was the 3 months my wife and I lived in Jhansi, India and the 4 1/2 years we lived in Canada: one country both literally and metaphorically on the other side of the world, and the other so close it takes months to truly understand its differences from the USA. These experiences combined to make me curious about my own country, its culture, its history, and its role--for good as well as bad--in the world.