I was born and raised in Southeast Missouri, almost exactly halfway between St. Louis and Memphis, TN. My mother was a homemaker who occasionally worked outside the home and my father was a truck driver.

I am married to Teresa who is also a retired music educator, most recently for 22 years at Woerther Elementary. My two daughters both work for the Special School District within the Rockwood School District. One is an Area Coordinator serving Woerther, Ballwin and Selvidge and the other teaches in a Cross Categorical classroom at Geggie. Both daughters are K-12 Rockwood products.

I hold degrees from Southeast Missouri State University (Bachelor of Music Education), University of Illinois (Master’s in Music Education), Lindenwood University (Master’s in Educational Administration), and University of Missouri at St. Louis (EdS in Educational Administration).

I was an active leader in my undergraduate years as an officer in Phi Mu Alpha, professional music fraternity, and the Student Assistant Director of the Golden Eagles Marching Band.

My first teaching assignment found me in a tiny school in southern Missouri called Norwood. I was the vocal and instrumental teacher for K-12. There were about 235 students in the entire school, and I had the pleasure of teaching almost all of them!

I next taught Band 5-12 in the Senath-Hornersville School District in the Bootheel of Missouri. If you went due North from our house, you would go into Arkansas before passing back into Missouri! I spent four years there building the band program before moving on, taking with me wonderful memories and relationships which remain today.

In 1989, I came to the Rockwood School District as the Assistant Band Director at Lafayette. To say it was culture shock would be an understatement. It was the first year that the current Lafayette building opened and I thought I was going to be teaching in a shopping mall. It was very overwhelming to me at first. The thing that changed that for me was meeting the students and band parents. It took no time to realize that, rural or urban, kids are kids and parents are parents. I dearly loved my time teaching at Lafayette. In addition to Lafayette, I taught at Crestview, Kehrs Mill and Rockwood Valley. I had wonderful students, parents, and colleagues, many of whom I remain closely connected to.

After 11 years in Rockwood, I began to view the school with a more wide-angle lens. I realized that there were hundreds of students going through Lafayette who I would never even meet and upon whom I had no impact. I began to work on additional graduate hours at this time and soon felt the call to become a building administrator. I obtained my administration degree from Lindenwood and began to apply for positions. I particularly love middle school aged children and concentrated my efforts in that area.

In 2000, I was hired by the Francis Howell School District as an Assistant Principal at Barnwell Middle School. There I met and was mentored by Sue Hartman, who was the building Principal. At the end of that year, there was a restructuring of the administration and Sue and I were moved together to Bryan Middle, where I spent the next seven years. While there, I was very involved in transforming the school to the Professional Learning Communities and Response to Intervention models. During this time I was also trained as a presenter for an anti-bullying program. I traveled throughout the state giving presentations on combating bullying in schools. I worked with some amazing educators and grew a great deal as an educator myself while at Francis Howell.

I soon began to feel that I wanted to move into a Head Principal role and implement what I had learned in another setting. In 2008, I moved to the Mehlville School District as the Principal of Bernard Middle School. Over the next four years, we were able to put into place a high functioning Response To Intervention model where teams of educators used objective data to place students into needed interventions to be successful. Interventions flowed seamlessly between building interventions and, when needed, special education services.

In 2012, I retired from service in the public school setting. Since that time, I have worked in a variety of settings including; Band Director at Borgia Grade School in Washington MO, University Supervisor for Missouri State and Lindenwood Universities, Adjunct Professor for Lindenwood, part time and substitute administrator in Francis Howell, and as the Music Minister at Wildwood Christian Church.

Music is, of course, one of my main hobbies and avocations. In addition to my church, I also play in a band called “The Pick Too Trio” at various venues in the West County area. I very much enjoy doing portrait and wedding photography as well. I have done a fair amount of cycling. A couple of my cycling accomplishments include over 20 years riding in the Bike MS event raising money for research, riding in the “Bike Across Missouri” ride with one of my two brothers, which covered Rt. 66 from Joplin to Eureka, and riding with my two brothers the entire Natchez Trace Parkway (444 miles) several years ago. 

I feel called to serve on the Rockwood Board of Education as clearly as I did to be an administrator. I feel that it is a way for me to continue to serve the students of this district and in some small way, give back to the district which has been so very good to me and my family. Rockwood is a great school district. There is alway room to improve. I would like to be a part of that continuous improvement. Things never stay the same in education. When we know better, we do better.