My Reading Life
A list of books I have read recently.
I am a creative problem solver who is fixated on helping our world's youth discover their passions and develop the skills they will need in our future world.
My experience in admissions, marketing, teaching, coaching and mentoring students at multiple boarding schools helps me to quickly adapt and start making an immediate impact.
Working in marketing and admissions at boarding schools, I always have more ideas than time. Mob42 helps to fill that gap by helping schools create content and tell their school's stories.
As many of my students will have jobs that do not exist currently, my focus was not just tech proficiency, but in being well rounded, smart, problem solving young men.
Classes Taught: Computer Science and Engineering (Project Lead the Way), Computer Programming (PHP, Processing), Microcontrollers (Arduino), Desktop Publishing & Design, Web Development, Intro to Computers (JR High), Reading (JR High)
The Board of Trustees hired me to restart the Admissions Department, handle the marketing, and help make the school successful. Arriving on campus I found that all of our promotional materials (print and web) stated that we were a military school (they recently switched to being a Christian boarding school). I spent a busy two weeks updating everything, putting out print ads in local magazines, and helping the Headmaster design an awesome school. The Board of Trustees voted to close the school and attempt to reopen it as a school for illegal immigrant children as a way to increase their personal revenue from the campus. I volunteered for a week to help archive and document the 135 year history of the school, after getting all of the current students placed in other schools.
As the Admissions Director, I gave countless tours of the campus, began a cadet guide group to help with campus tours, organized open houses, traveled to educational fairs and home visits, interviewed students in person and over Skype, recruited international students, dealt with tragedy, and even showed Senator Jeff Sessions around our little campus.
Classes Taught: Computer Programming (Visual Basic), Microcontrollers (Arduino)
Much like the above work for Lyman Ward Military Academy, I came into an organization that needed help keeping up with the world around them. In a few short weeks I created an awesome web presence for them, consolidated social networking assets, helped with admissions, and portrayed daily life on campus via photos and videos.
I had the opportunity to create a high school class (Invention and Innovation) and teach it over the summer. This was the first english speaking high school class on the Arduino, an open source microcontroller development board and programming environment. As a class we followed the students project building ideas to complete a remote control car with a laptop as the remote, an aerial photography kite that actually got a few good photos on a windless day, a smart paintball marker, a self warming franken-coffee-cup, and a motion detecting stoplight.
Classes Taught: Microcontroller Invention and Innovation (Arduino)
Realizing my passion for teaching, I finally finished my degree in General Studies. There was no challenge in my Business and Programming classes so in moving to General Studies I was able to take interesting classes of senior level English and History, Photography (with film), and lots of Speech. Being very close to a degree in Management Information Systems, I took all the fun classes like Accounting, Databases, Economics, Finance, Management, Marketing, Programming, and Statistics.
Military boarding schools are very different places than traditional schools. Academics are of course a priority, but cadet life is very focused on leadership skills, responsibility, organization and character development. As a college freshman, I was on a team responsible for the welfare of 45+ junior high students. Most people now know me as someone who is always in a good mood, this comes from lessons I learned with our "Foxtrotters".
My sophomore year I managed the school's website; taking photos, writing content, and promoting the academy.
A list of books I have read recently.
A few of my favorite recent articles.