I’ve just completed my 44th year teaching in the Maricopa Community Colleges, where I’ve taught across the entire STEAM spectrum—physics, engineering, math, microprocessor technology, computer art, and more. Most recently, I served as a one-year sabbatical replacement for a physics faculty member and, to expand my teaching credentials, I completed graduate-level mathematics coursework to be qualified to teach college math. My career has always centered around one question: How do we make learning meaningful, applicable, and enduring?
For over 30 years, I’ve been deeply engaged with physics education research, continually exploring how to foster real thinking in classrooms rather than rote performance. In the Building Thinking Classrooms movement, I’ve found a pedagogical home—one that finally aligns with my belief that learning must be visible, active, and socially constructed. My most recent turn has brought me full circle: after tutoring a friend’s struggling 15-year-old in Algebra (and confronting the painful reality of how traditional math education fails so many), I’ve decided to apply for a high school math teaching position for next year. Talk to me about applied math, thinking-rich pedagogy, cross-disciplinary project design, or reimagining education so that math is no longer the gatekeeper of dreams.
