My Journey
I was born and raised in southwest Missouri, in a tiny town called Nevada. I attended Nevada High School where I began dating Deanna. She was a year younger than me and I knew I had a pretty great thing so I held on to her as tightly as I could. The adventure was about to begin.
I began my college career at The University of Missouri (GO TIGERS!). Deanna attended Macalester College in St. Paul and she had my heart, so I said goodbye to my Zou Crew and headed up north.
While in Minnesota, I attended Metropolitan State University and became an Urban Education major. I also worked for two years with an AmeriCorp program called Admission Possible. Life was pretty good but I needed to sweeten the pot, so I asked Deanna to marry me. She agreed and we packed up and headed East for graduate school.
We spent the first four years of our marriage in Princeton, New Jersey where Deanna earned two Masters Degrees. I taught for a year as a reading recovery aid in an elementary school and then the next three in Trenton High School. After four years, Deanna and I felt called to the mission field and so we packed up and headed even farther east.
We spent two years living in the Middle East in Lebanon. (Fun fact, Lebanon is the only Middle Eastern country without a desert.) I taught English for two years at a missionary school that served high school Christians and Muslims. It was at this time that we had the first of our two little girls. Actually, my oldest daughter's name, Lily, came from a shop on a little street in Lebanon. Despite the beauty of the country, the Ph.D. was calling Deanna and so we moved again. This time we headed back west.
Does this map look familiar? We spent the next five years back in Princeton and while Deanna worked on her Ph.D. I began teaching English in Lawrenceville, New Jersey and met some of the greatest educators I have ever had the privilege of knowing. It was during this period that we had baby number two - Willa. She's a firecracker for sure.
In April of 2015, Deanna was offered a professorship at Emory University and so we packed our bags and headed down south. We feel so welcomed and privileged to live in such a great community. As a teacher of English for sixteen years and in the education world for eighteen, I look forward to working with the parents, students, and faculty at Alpharetta High School.