Brian

After I graduated from West Seattle High School in 1970, I decided I wasn't ready for college. I bought a motorcycle instead, which caused my father to suggest that it was time for me to move out on my own.

So I got a job delivering appliances and spent a year driving around Seattle dropping off refrigerators and televisions. Seeing that the opportunity for advancement in appliance delivery was not very bright, I enrolled in Green River Community College in the fall of 1971. I was working the swing shift at a steel mill in Seattle and attending classes during the day.

But I wanted to see more of the world, so I put school on hold, and in January of 1973 I flew to Europe and spent 6 months hitch-hiking through Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. I spent 8 days guarding a broken-down RV in the middle of the Sahara Desert, dreaming about lions in the Serengeti, but after a week in the heat we decided Switzerland sounded good too.

When I started school again at GRCC I was ready to buckle down, and I received my A.A. degree in 1975 and transferred to the University of Washington that fall. I spent three years there while I earned Bachelor's degrees in Botany and Zoology. A highlight was spending a quarter living and studying at the Marine Laboratory at Friday Harbor.

Upon graduation in 1978 my first job was as a Foreign Fisheries Observer working on Japanese trawlers in the Gulf of Alaska. I spent 60 days at sea, on three different vessels, and I saw, and ate (often raw), most of the fish that swim in those waters. When I returned to Seattle, I put my plan of attending graduate school on hold, and started working as a deckhand on a small freighter running from Seattle out to Dutch Harbor and back. After spending the winter of 1979 in the Gulf of Alaska, working on dry land sounded awfully good. I started working in construction, and did concrete work and framing for the next couple of years. In 1981 I married my beautiful wife Trina, and began to think about getting a job that would support a family.

In 1983 I enrolled in Western Washington University, and between September and June I earned 59 credits, did my student teaching at Mt. Vernon High School, and obtained my Teaching Certificate. I was hired to teach math and science at Sequim High School in the fall of 1984. I received a Master's Degree in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Wasington in 1988.  In 1991 I transferred to our Middle School, where I taught math for 10 years, before coming back to the High School in 2001.

During the 2007-2008 academic year I worked on earning certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and in November 2008 I became a National Board Certified Teacher in Mathematics for Adolescents and Young Adults.