homoLudens

I
suppose it makes sense to tell you something about myself since, over
the next four weeks, I’ll be asking you to tell me quite a few things
about yourselves. So???

I live in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights,
on the city’s sunny southern edge. The neighborhood has hills, narrow
streets, and tiny houses inhabited by tolerant people and very smart
dogs.

I run the library at Galileo Academy of Science and Technology, which is over on San Francisco’s northern edge,
within sight of the Golden Gate Bridge, Mt. Tamalpais and Alcatraz. The
library work lets me spend time with three of my four favorite
companions: students, books, and computers. If dogs were allowed in the
library, I’d have the best job in the world. Before landing in a
library, I taught English, English as a Second Language, Social
Studies, basic Chinese Mandarin, technology and yoga. Of those
subjects, yoga was the most fun and the most tiring.

I also work as an Associate Director for the Bay Area Writing Project
(BAWP) at the University of California at Berkeley. In that job, I
explore with lots of other teachers interesting ways to use the internet for reading, writing and
research.

I visited Shanghai in April, 2004, with 23 of my co-workers from Galileo.
(If dogs were allowed to teach with us, we’d have the best faculty in
the world.) I loved Shanghai - its energy, its openness, its amazing
willingness to change. I look forward to getting back for a long stay.