I

 

I

 grew up in a small Vermont town, very similar to Newfield, called Underhill. Underhill was not far from Burlington, which is a city very similar to Ithaca. 

 

Our house in Vermont was jam-packed with incredible stuff: books, magazines, maps, music, games, puzzles and artwork. One map covered an entire wall. It looked just like the map on the wall outside my classroom, but much larger and it showed all of northern Vermont instead of the Newfield area. My friends and I almost wore holes in it pointing to our houses and the fun places we had been. 

I guess I got my love of learning from all these wonderful resources, as well as my parents, who loved to learn. My father died when I was young, but my mother still lives in that great house, at the foot of Mount Mansfield, Vermont’s tallest mountain. Wow, what a view! I wasn’t a teacher in Vermont, I was a carpenter, but I was learning.

 

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y younger sister and her husband, who is a master carpenter, built their house right next door. The rest of us moved away. My younger brother lives in West Virginia. He is a teacher now, but he was a carpenter then, too. My older sister lives in New York City, where she works at a university, and my older brother, a lawyer, lives in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada. We certainly have spread out.

 

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hen I left home, I was almost eighteen and I moved around a lot. First I went out west for a short time to the Queen Charlotte Islands, which are in Canada, not far from Alaska. The Native Americans we lived with there were some of the friendliest, most generous people I have known. They loved art and fishing and good food, but I missed my old friends and returned to Vermont. 

If you ever get a chance to travel to the Pacific Northwest, do it. It’s an amazing part of the world. Just seeing the towering trees and the jagged, snow-capped mountain peaks makes the trip worth it. I remember going skiing all day one July 4^th, in the Rocky Mountains – that’s right, mid-summer skiing – and then swimming in the warm Pacific Ocean that evening! You can’t do that around here.  I wasn’t a teacher in the Charlottes, I did odd jobs for people. Still, I was learning.

 

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hen I returned, I didn’t stay long. I went right back to Canada, but this time I moved to Montréal to go to art school. When I finished there, I moved to New York City and attended SUNY Farmingdale, a college on Long Island.  I wasn’t a teacher in Long Island, but I volunteered at a camp for inner city students – getting closer.

 

I

 met my beautiful wife, Teresa, at Farmingdale. I don’t believe in love at first sight, but this was close. We were married less than a year later, when we graduated 30 years ago, and we moved to Ithaca so I could continue my education at Cornell. About ten years later my daughter, Victoria, was born, followed four years after by my son, Alexander. Now he is a senior in high school, and she’s in college. I wasn’t a teacher in Ithaca, I worked in specialty stores. I sold wine, but my favorite part was talking with people about how the grapes were grown, and how they were almost magically turned into wine – getting closer.

 

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or several years I worked in the specialty stores, but I got fed up. I was burned out. I was almost forty years old when I quit my job and went back to college to become – a teacher.

 

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 sure am glad I did. I love this job, I love the people I work with, and the students I’ve come to know. I’m a teacher, and I will always be learning. I hope we can have fun learning together this year.

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