Attended BCD: 1994-2001, Grades 4-10I decided to become a teacher of literature in Adrienne Cosel’s eighth-grade English class. I had been an interested student of history and science before that time, but from the first day of school in 1998, I had a completely transcendental experience through the reading and discussion of books. I glimpsed for the first time a world in which the pursuit of truth was the intellectual currency of the classroom, in which I was challenged and encouraged. Nowhere was this more evident than in Mrs. Cosel’s commentary on my writing; I still aspire to the level of detail and precision in commenting that she was able to give on draft after draft.The salient point about BCD is the high level at which we were expected to perform. I came to realize, as I moved into adulthood, that the level of intellectual engagement demanded of me in Geoff Ashworth’s sixth-grade geography class – another formative experience – was something that I would not experience again until college, and not always consistently even there. In my work, I try every day to live up to my role models at BCD: Tim Gore, Ned Douglas, Adrienne Cosel, Geoff Ashworth, and Eugénie Fawcett.I left BCD when my family moved to southern New Jersey, and I graduated from Moorestown Friends School, going on to study at Middlebury College in Vermont. I acted on my passion for the humanities there by majoring in Comparative Literature and Russian. The Russian major came about by happenstance but became a huge part of my life. I studied for a year at Irkutsk State University in central Siberia, also interning at a local theatre (another passion developed at BCD, this time at the secondary school with John Haddon).After graduation, I began my teaching career at St. Andrew’s School in Delaware, but I moved on after two years to the Slavic-Anglo-American School “Marina” in Moscow, Russia, where I taught literature and social studies in middle and high school. The school is Russian-speaking, but has an exceptional English program, so I was able to teach roughly the same sorts of books in high school that I would in the United States. Living in Moscow afforded me the ability to cement my knowledge of Russian language and to explore a fascinating part of the world. Partway through my time there, I was picked up as a weekly online columnist by Russia Profile, an English-language news magazine; I still write for them.I moved this past summer to Ann Arbor, Michigan, and I began teaching English and History in September at University Liggett School, north of Detroit. Everywhere I’ve lived since high school has been snowy – Russia in particular, but metro Detroit is no exception – which has allowed me to continue indulging my passion for Nordic skiing, an interest I developed first at BCD with Gary Miller, and which became a lifelong obsession. I caught the ski marathon bug in college, and have competed so far in five races longer than 50 kilometers in New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Estonia, and Norway. I’ve also, inspired by Geoff Ashworth, become an avid home brewer.Since leaving BCD, I have lived in five places, and I have taken everywhere with me (the binders of readings, essays, and handouts) from Mrs. Cosel’s 8th and 9thgrade English classes. They have provided me with the model of good teaching that I aspire to. The essays, dripping with red ink in her angular script, help put me back in the shoes of my students, so I can be a more effective teacher by reliving the struggles of learning to articulate myself fully and forcefully as a student. Sitting next to me in my office, as I write, is the cabinet where I keep them, and have kept them since college. They have been my constant companions and guides since leaving BCD in 2001.I only hope that I can live up to the education I received there.
