Additional information about me not in my forum discussion post.

I’m completing my 14th year at the West Bend High Schools and 17th year of teaching overall. This is my second career – before entering public education, I was serving local United Methodist Church congregations in Northern Illinois and Wisconsin as an ordained minister.

My interest in the Holocaust began in high school and took on a life of its own after my first visit to the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC in 2002. Since then I’ve participated in numerous professional development courses on the Holocaust and spent two weeks last summer in Israel studying the Holocaust with an intensive week of research and study at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

Outside of the classroom, I’ve coached wrestling at both the middle and high school levels (I won my first international medal as a competitor 8 years ago!), advise our high schools’ Gay-Straight Alliance, and have served as our department leader. I’m active in our local Holocaust Education Resource Center, serving on their teacher advisory committee and providing photography services for their annual Kristallnacht commemoration services as well as the annual Yom Hashoah service.

I dabble in a number of artistic endeavors when I’m at home – I have a stained glass studio in our basement, and four years ago I started my own photography business. My camera seldom leaves my side and our tour guide in Israel nicknamed me “Steven Spielberg.” My trip to NYC in June will be my third time in the Big Apple and I’m looking forward to documenting this visit with a different eye than my previous visits.

My partner and I are parents to a soon-to-be seventeen year old son who plays hockey, works for the Kohler Company, and plans to enlist in the military when he graduates. We also have a fourteen year old daughter who will be a freshman next year and is in love with all things associated with One Direction. She’s 100% girl, through and through, and hopes to become a neonatal nurse.

I’m very excited to be part of the Summer Institute and look forward to meeting my fellow participants and the staff!