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"Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and
I'll understand."
Chinese Proverb
"Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat."
Jean-Paul
Sartre
Philosopher, Writer
"Keep with it. It's easy to teach kids who are already motivated."
Vincent LaPaglia
H.S. Psychology Teacher
"He was so learned that he could name a horse in nine languages; so
ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on."
Benjamin
Franklin
"Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be liberal;
avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men."
Lao Tzu
Philosopher
"Only the educated are free."
Epictetus
Philosopher
"It takes a village to raise a child."
African
Proverb
"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them
to become what they are capable of being."
Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe
Writer
"Doubt is the origin of wisdom."
Rene
Descartes
Philosopher, Mathematician
"The job of an educator is to teach students to see vitality in
themselves."
Joseph
Campbell
Philosopher, Storyteller
"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need
for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the
philosophy is kindness."
Dalai Lama
Buddhist Leader
"There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That's
perfectly all right; they're the aperture to finding out what's right.
Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive
the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny."
Carl Sagan
Science Advocate
"Great minds have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre
minds."
Albert
Einstein
Physicist
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Professional Profile
A growth-orientated and effective educational leader in a team
setting who promotes ongoing school improvement through learner-centered
strategies and methodologies.
- Hold Masters Degree in
Leadership and Administration and Bachelors Degree in Mathematics.
- Obtained Second Masters in
Instructional Design for Online Learning. Consequently, knowledge of educational
technology is high.
- Strong work-ethic,
dedication to bringing educational communities to the 21st Century,
strong desire to lead using contemporary educational research, and
belief that all students desire to learn and can learn.
Key Qualifications
Certified in General Leadership (Type 75)
Structure
leadership through: 1) faculty empowerment, 2) humanistic strategies, and 3)
culture of communication.
Certified in Mathematics Education (Type 09)
Professional
practices include: 1) use equal emphasis on the three learning modalities
(learner-content, learner-instructor, and learner-learner), 2) integration of
technology through the use of Internet resources and graphing calculators,
and 3) inclusion of metacognition using Socratic techniques.
Employment
Leadership
Morton West High School, Berwyn,
IL
Assistant Principal [Present]
- Evaluated non-tenured and tenured teachers.
- Instilled a collaborative learning environment to assist
teachers in becoming effective educators.
- Special
Education Staffings: Led staffings
that dealt with the appropriate legal placement of special education
students within their least restrictive environments.
- Worked with a variety of school personnel to find win-win
solutions.
Morton East High School, Cicero,
IL
Dean of Students [2005 to 2007]
- Problem
solved student situations to create positive learning environments while
helping students to understand the connection between behaviors and
consequences.
- SIT:
Assisted and led a team that identified and assisted poorly performing
and extra needs students. The team constituted a dean, three counselors,
a social worker, and a psychologist.
- Dean's
Advisory Committee: Helped manage the operations of the committee by
assisting and leading the committee as it handled situational and
organizational discipline issues. Earlier involvement dealt with
communication of issues and solutions to and from staff.
- Data
Management: Received training on using critical data indicators for
evaluating and affecting improvement in high schools.
- Leadership
Institute: Learned how to use Professional Learning Communities to
create collaborative, interdependent, outcome-based teams of teachers in
order to make substantive improvements within schools.
- Executive
Board Committee: Worked on the Negotiations Subcommittee and as the
Treasurer within the teachers union.
- Student
of the Month Committee: Assisted by reviewing profiles of students to
determine which students get presented with an award before the Board of
Education.
- Academic
Freedom Committee: Preserved teacher autonomy.
- School
Improvement Planning Committee: Solved problems with a diverse
cross-section of faculty and administration over four years as an
elected representative of the math department and served as co-chair of
the committee.
- Educational
Council: Collaborated with colleagues as an elected member, striving for
schoolwide restructuring solutions for over
three years -- both as a mathematics and a
union representative.
Morton East High School, Cicero,
IL
Director of Instructional Assessment
[2005 to 2007]
- Coordinated with assistant principals across the district and
teachers within the building.
- Prepared, scored, compiled, and reported information to
principals and the superintendent.
- Helped streamline the district to implement a barcode system.
Teaching
Morton East High School, Cicero,
IL
Mathematics Teacher [1993 to 2005]
- MATHguide.com:
Integrated the use of my own professional website within my classes, at
all levels, so that students can learn mathematics through
learner-orientated methodologies.
- Algebra
Curriculum: Assisted in the development of a hands-on algebra course
that did not rely solely on symbolic manipulation and integrated the use
of graphing calculators.
- Student
Teacher: Participated in the development of a student teacher by
providing substantive guidance regarding lesson planning, reaching
behavior objectives, relating to high school students, and delivering
constructive criticism that will follow the student teacher through a
self-directed, metacognitive mindset.
- Who's
Who Among America's Teachers: Honored for teaching excellence by a
former student and entered in the 1998-99 and 1999-2000 editions.
- Practical
Knowledge: Utilized knowledge of the physical sciences to provide real
world applications to mathematics.
- Collaboration:
Worked with fellow teachers in department-wide and interdisciplinary
fashions.
- Night
School Instructor: Instructed night school math courses for "last
chance" students.
- Tutor:
Taught homebound students.
- Conferences:
Attended meetings for professional development which included strategies
for teaching gifted students, using the Internet to find sources for
concrete data, adopting textbooks, studying the research on
inter-disciplinary learning teams and listening to fellow educators from
across Illinois
at an ICTM meeting.
Education and Honors
Master of Science: Instructional Design for
Online Learning
Capella University, Minneapolis, MN.
2006
Master of Education: Leadership and Administration
Benedictine University, Lisle,
IL. 2001
Bachelor of Science: Mathematics
Roosevelt University,
Chicago, IL 1991
Associate of Science: Engineering
Associate of Art: Liberal Arts and Sciences
Morton College, Cicero, IL
1988 & 1989, respectively
Dean's List, Morton Scholar, Phi
Theta Kappa Honors Society
Specialty in Technology Support Structures
Created a website, called MATHguide
[www.mathguide.com], which
is a mathematics education site. The key points of the site:
- Learned
HTML & Perl computer languages and Dreamweaver
& Flash software products.
- Constructed
online lessons and a bulletin board to assist students in an
asynchronous environment.
- Built
dynamic quizmasters that randomly provide problems and check students'
solutions.
Designed and instructed a technology course for parents
and community members. The course introduced learners to elements of Word,
PowerPoint, and Excel. Learners also became familiar with the Internet and
gained free e-mail from Hotmail or Yahoo.
Designed and instructed a one-day course on how to create
HTML documents as learning tools for instructors. Invite educators to
understand the role of technology as a growing learning agent and also
demystify the creation of online learning materials.
Professional Affiliations
American Association of School Administrators
National Council of the Teachers of Mathematics
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