My Story

After getting a college degree in computer science with no idea what I wanted to do with it I decided to pursue a career in the law. I worked as a paralegal and interned at the Senate before heading off to law school.

During law school I focused on criminal law and spent one summer as an intern clerk for a judge at the Delaware Supreme Court and then another summer as an intern in a district attorney's office. These were pretty much my dream legal jobs but I realized I spent a lot of my days watching the clock. At the same time, a roommate of mine who was a teacher would talk about his day and I was routinely jealous. During my third year I finally figured out that maybe the law wasn't for me.

I got into teaching the subject I was most familiar with - math. I taught algebra, geometry, advanced algebra and pre-calculus. After a few years I realized a few things about teaching math. First, most of my students did not like math. Second, even more of my students would never need most of the knowledge we covered - outside of my teaching career I have never needed to know how to find the center of a triangle, much less four different types of triangle centers. I loved teaching and working with the students but high school mathematics felt so pointless. Once again it took me a few years to figure out that I needed to do something different.

I found a job teaching computer science and was prepared to break out the dusty old java books I had learned from and try and figure out a way to make it sound interesting. Thankfully, I ended up at a school with a brilliant four year computer science program idea - teach the kids to make actual projects. After a few years of examining what it means to successfully teach computer science I left traditional education to focus on better outcomes for students.

I now work with like-minded individuals at NerdLevels, a computer programming education company. We create and provide curriculum for both adult students and high school computer science programs to walk students through one of two tracks based on their interests.