I am a math teacher at Lexington High School.

Though I have wanted to be a teacher for as long as I can remember, after getting a B.A. in mathematics and an M.S. in computer science I worked for about 25 years as a computer software engineer. These were good years, but after seven years in a startup company I decided to realize that dream. I entered the Harvard Graduate School of Education in June 2007 and graduated with an Ed.M. in June 2008. I hold a Massachusetts Initial license.

I grew up with the formal "new math" and have seen the laissez-faire hyper-constructivism popular today along with the "back to basics" reaction. My approach is to take the best of each and to acknowledge both the synergy and the tension between student-led discovery, teacher-led curriculum, and basic skills.

I try to help all students students discover the interrelatedness, beauty and joy of math and to awaken all students to their nascent abstraction skills. These goals are of course interrelated. One of my students taught me a quote from Einstein from which I have taken a phrase that I use as our class theme: passionately curious.

It is a thrill to see an advanced student make these connections and demonstrate this passion, but it is at least as important to help less advanced students do so, especially when, over time, the less advanced students become more advanced and more passionate. This happened to me, so I am particularly motivated to pay this forward.

Learning happens best with motivated students who have a personal relationship with their teacher. I work every day to find ways to connect with my students and simply to listen to them. This enhances their math education and also our mutual growth as human beings.

As an educator with more than my share of computer experience, I tend to get involved with my school's computing infrastructure. I am often asked about computers in the classroom. Computers are important in a number of ways: communication with students and families, keeping track of student data, a more dynamic "blackboard," and virtual manipulatives, for example. (I have written a virtual manipulative of my own.) I advocate for open source software in education. But computers are no panacea and cannot substitute for the "heavy lifting" that is still required to make a concept one's own.

I am also an accomplished musician and enjoy getting involved with my school's music program.