AWARDS
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Presidential Awardee in Mathematics Teaching (2009)
Nothing professionally has matched the moment when I shook the President of the United States hand. It was very surreal and yet very very rewarding that somehow I was seen as an assest to this country. What an amazing honor to have been selected. Milken Foundation Educator of the Year (2009)
This was an amazing shock. There is no application process for this award - it just happened. I was invited to attend a school assembly (a very hush hush assembly) and there I was notified that I had won the award. If you watch the video (link above) you will see my surprise. This was a real wonderful recognition for something I love to do. Not to mention the $25,000 amount that is given to me to use however I desire. We paid off lots of things but saved some of it for a wonderful trip to Europe (Switzerland, Germany, & Austria) - I life long dream of mine..... Radio Shack National Teacher of the Year (2003) In 2003 I was very surprised to be awarded the Radio Shack National Teacher of the Year Award. While the title makes it sound like I was the only one to recieve the award there were about 100 who received it that year but it was a great honor to be selected. I received national recognition, $3,000 and my wife and I enjoyed a trip to Philidelphia to receive the award. It was a very special time in my career to be recognized at this level. |
RECOGNITION |
A-Tech Board Game Club and A-Tech Board Game Marathons
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| The creation of the Board Game Marathon has brought interest to A-Tech and to my classroom. It is hard to believe that 250+ students would attend an event that focuses on playing board games... but they do. The local papers have covered our events a few times and they are a real hit with our student body. | |
ABOUT ME |
Next came outside interest - what I didn't know was that other teachers had found my little corner of the web and wanted their students to use the site as well. Mostly they wanted their students to participate in the PoW. Wow... this was very flattering. So of course I opened the PoW up to anyone who wanted to participate in it. Little did I know that this eventually turned into 600 to 800 PoW entries a week and at that time I graded them all myself. Before I knew it, there were at least 60 teachers of 24 different states using the site regularly. (Thus the formation of the e-zgeometry friends). It was amazing!! It was this huge success that led to a very special award that I received. In 2003, I was named by RadioShack, as one of their National Teachers of the Year. This was a great honor but even more rewarding was that this little site was making such a huge impact on classrooms and students.
It has taken us two years (New Site Posted on May 1st, 2006) to get the site ready for the public but it has been a wonderful journey. |
In the summer of 1998, I got ambitious and began designing a website for my high school geometry classes. I put the usual things on the site (the syllabus, the course expectations, the basic instructor information, and a list of our upcoming assignments and tests - a bit like this site....) but I also wanted to provide my students with more resources. This desire prompted me to summarize the entire textbook so that they would have additional notes to reference while at home or during class if they had printed them out. The support resources continued: I linked to my textbook's online quizzes, I provided a few quicktime videos, and I also made a few java applets for interactive discoveries but the most popular item that was created was the PoW, the Problem of the Week. Each week students would be given an online weekly geometry challenge problem that would push their understanding and ability. The site was a great resource for my classroom. Over the year the resources of the site grew and so did its impact. I found many of my students finding greater success in geometry because of this support mechanism.
While I know a little about web design, the site started to show its age and I didn't know how to upgrade it...... My answer to this dillema came in a transfer to a new school. I changed schools and landed myself at, the technology magnet school in Clark County School District. When I was hired here at Advanced Technologies Academy I discussed my interest in forming a class of the school's most talented programmers, graphic artists, multimedia designers to redesign the site and make it into a national website for all schools. The principal loved the idea.