: About Me

I have over 15 years experience working with children of all ages in a variety of situations, except the formal classroom. For five years I was a practicing teacherpreneur (entrepreneurial teacher) home schooling other people's children in a community-based program using a coaching model of teaching.

I have operated my own businesses for over 15 years and periodically assisted others in running theirs. After 18 years as a student in the industrial school system, I was clear that I did not want to teach in a traditional classroom. On the other hand I had an equally strong intuition that I should teach children. This apparent contradiction led me through most of the existing non-classroom opportunities to work with children; summer programs; child-care, both in homes and centers; before-and-after school care programs; then, I created my own home schooling program.

Being an entrepreneur in a field dominated by the orthodoxy of the classroom meant that I was forced to deeply examine my approach. My book, Attitude First, began as the result of composing various ways to explain my innovative teaching approach as I simultaneously marketed my services.

is to be a professional student.

Education > Teachers & Administrators How American schools fail our children

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Not all American schools fail our children. Sudbury Valley School (founded in 1968) and the democratic school movement, of which is a part, are examples of schools that exemplify the very highest ideals of what the United States was, is and can be(I can't speak to schools in other parts of the Americas.) Thus I will use the democratic school as a basis for comparison to the typical classroom-based teacher-managed schooling on the assumption that this is what is meant by "American schools." Here are the key characteristics of prototypical classrooms as distinguished from democratic schoolin...

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