About Mike
I'm a teacher at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in Rochester, NY. Here in NY, I've taught at Honeoye Falls-Lima High School and Victor High School. I arrived here via a circuitous path through Owatonna High School near Minnesota’s twin cities and Wheaton Warrenville South High School near Chicago.
To check out my old classroom, click here.
Minnesota had tough winters, good baseball, but a bad place to watch it. Chicago had tough winters, good baseball, and the best place to watch it. New York has tough winters, and I’ve heard they might actually have some baseball here, too. We left Chicago to live on a Minnesota farm, and now we’ve left the farm to explore New York. It’s been quite a journey, and it continues to be fun.
Aside from my brief MTV appearance, I lead a relatively normal existence -- a wife, two children, a large dog, and a pleasant home in the sleepy hamlet of Fairport, NY. Before becoming a teacher I worked in the glitzy and glamorous world of advertising, trying to convince people that they needed more Head & Shoulders Shampoo in their hair, more Mr. Clean on their floors, and more deodorant on their...well, armpits (there, I said it). Lately, I’ve been teaching a media literacy course trying to convince them that they don't.
I studied hard to get such neat jobs. I have a Bachelors degree in Psychology and Business Administration from The University of Iowa and I earned Masters degrees from Northwestern and DePaul Universities. I'm a big fan of all these schools (I should be; they have a lot of my $$$)! All of them do a great job of melding academics and co-curricular activities, and I hope this web site does the same for you.
In my spare time, I enjoy participating in sports, but now that I'm old and my body aches I've limited my activities to pick-up basketball and summer baseball (I flash the leather better than I hit a curveball). I play the guitar a bit, mostly for my children at home and for my students at our Creative Juices Cafe coffeehouse at school. I enjoy writing poetry and fiction, although my next major project is going to be writing a play, probably because I truly love attending the theater (I prefer Mamet to musicals any day). I wrote a newspaper column a while back called On Second Thought. If you're bored out of your skull, with absolutely nothing better to do, go ahead and give it a gander.
I'm a news and politics junky and my students do a great job of keeping me informed in these areas. I love the movies (renting, not the crowded & noisy big screen viewing) and I love to read. However, I'm woefully behind on both of these counts, and I'd welcome your ideas for future pursuits.