Chemistry/Physics/Trap Coach Email Phone: 715-546-3321
About Me
I grew up in Hiles, Wis. — just 13 miles down Hwy 32 from Three Lakes — and I attended school in the Crandon School District, where I graduated in 1987. I then studied at Ripon College and received my bachelor's in chemistry with a teaching certification and minors in physics and math. I also earned a master's in educational technology from the American College of Education.
I am entering my 29th year of teaching at Three Lakes District where I have taught Chemistry, Chemistry II, Consumer Chemistry, Physics, Pre-Algebra, Algebra, Algebra II, Geometry, Applied Math, Global Science, Integrated Science Metals 1 and 2, Technical Math, How To Make Almost Anything (HTMAA), HTMAA 2, and Physical Science. I am currently teaching Chemistry, Chemistry II, Physics, Global Science, CNC, Organic Chemistry and Chemistry for Phelps High School.
I am married to my wife, Shannon, and we have a black Lab named Titan. My interests are hunting — particularly bow and gun deer, ruffed grouse, turkey, ducks and geese, and bear — open-water and ice-fishing, and spending time with my wife and dog.
Teaching Philosophy
My philosophy of learning can be described as hands-on. As a science teacher, I totally believe in student’s doing, not just listening or reading. To make science come alive, and math for that matter as well, I believe you have to get your hands dirty doing something. Active involvement by the students in their education is the best way to get them to learn, remember and apply the lessons we are teaching them.
I want my students to do more than just listen to lectures or work on problems or worksheets; I want them to manipulate, move, mix, and sort things. This can be physically or with technology. I want them to see changes happen, and then relate why the changes occurred. Then, I can get them to predict future changes by looking for patterns, for similarities, etc.
One of my favorite stories about chemistry is an excerpt from the memoirs of Ira Remsen, the founder of the chemistry department at Johns Hopkins University. In this excerpt, he tells how he was tired of reading about what reactions meant, and he wanted to see. After doing a costly experiment that ended up burning his fingers, wrecking a pair of pants, losing one of the few pennies he had, and having a hard time breathing, he said, “Plainly the only way to learn about it was to see the results, to experiment, to work in the laboratory.” (Gross, Bilash, Koob, 2005 p. 2-3).
I was always drawn to that notion, even long before I had ever read Remsen’s excerpt. This has greatly influenced my teaching philosophy. Even in my student teaching, I did a presentation about how we need students to do, to be active, not just have the book or lectures. They need to see and experience the material in many different ways. So in my classes, we do many labs, demonstrations and student-researched demonstrations. There are always times when any teacher is going to have to do some kind of lecture to transmit information, but then we need to reinforce that by doing something with it.
That brings the next piece of learning into view, which is to apply what we have learned, or for the students to apply what we have taught them. Just learning it isn’t enough, because they will then forget it as soon as the test is over. But if they apply information, or concepts, to new situations, and solve real problems with the tools we’ve taught them, they are much more likely to retain and have a real understanding of what we’ve wanted them to learn.