One Goal

I started teaching with two goals. First, I would convince students to love literature and history as I did. Second, I would quit after a few years to pursue a career as a writer. That was in 1981. Within a week, I'd been hooked by that mix of new ability and childlike curiosity that characterizes middle schoolers.

With nearly thirty years' experience, I've modified my methods. (Read my philosophy of writing. Read tributes to my teachers.)

Whatever I teach, I have one goal: digging deeply into life through telling stories. Today, I teach US History and Drama. But I've taught students at every grade level from kindergarten to college, in courses covering history (of England, the Renaissance, non-Western cultures), literature (Shakespeare and his contemporaries, modern drama, novels and poetry), song writing, creative writing, and cartooning.

From 1981 to 1998, I taught at St. Andrew's Episcopal School in Jackson, Mississippi, joining the faculty when its middle school was new (see St.Andrew's web site). To be closer to my family, I moved to Atlanta and The Walker School. (See a more detailed résumé.)

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Classes
• US History

• Drama

• Writing Instruction

• My Teachers
  Learn what I've learned from these masters.

• Résumé

    Thank you! My mother says that it's those grown-up students who take the time to make contact that keep a teacher going. She taught third grade for thirty-three years, so she should know. Thank you to these former students of mine from 1981 onward who got in touch with me. I save and savor their notes:

  2000s Steven Walters, brothers Chase and Reed McCallum, Vince Cellini, Kristina Friedgen, Marc McAfee, Brian Zabell.

  1990s Peter Clericuzio, Caldwell Collins Israel, Emily Almas, Megan McCullough, Bob Neill, Price Chadwick, Jennifer Allred, Greg Graeber, James "Buck" Cooper, David Brookins, Josh L. Cox, Ashley Brewer.

  1980s Scott Jones, Barry Jackson, Andrew Crockett, Kenny Graeber, Scott Albert Johnson, Lance Mayhew, Jessica Sweeney - Platt, Peter Larson, Adrian Slobin, Cheryl Collins .