Literature

I am a professor emeritus and past chair of the Education Department of Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania. My doctorate in Teaching, Curriculum, and Learning Environment was earned from the Harvard Graduate School of Education where I was the student representative on the Dean’s Select Committee and Judiciary Board on Sexual Policy and Harassment.

Since that time, I have been on the selection committee for Fulbright Scholars in Europe and worked with the Sousa Mendes Foundation dedicated to celebrating forgotten heroes and heroines who saved Jews during the Holocaust. My work in Northern Ireland allowed my students to be trained in mediation, negotiation, and restorative practice. In addition to teaching in Austria, Brazil, Costa Rica, and Northern Ireland I have lectured extensively across the United States and Europe.

As a child of inner-city St. Louis, I attended racially integrated schools. The reality was that at times I was the only white kid on my school bus, on my baseball team, and one of two white members of the Black Gospel Choir. I learned to see life through a very different lens. The neighborhood of my childhood was multi-cultural, multi-racial, and multi-ethnic. Raised by a single mother, a grandmother born in Ireland and a grandfather born in Sicily, I saw the prejudice immigrants experienced daily.

During the decade I was a public-school teacher, the inclusive award-winning curriculum I created was recognized by the Missouri Historical Society, Missouri Department of Education, the Danforth Foundation, Maryville University, and Webster University for integrating women, people of color, immigrants, and other neglected minorities into history and social studies courses.

 A speech impediment silenced me for many years making me an observer of human behavior, kindness, and cruelty. When I became a teacher in the only racially integrated school district in St. Louis County, I was determined every student would be encouraged to find and strengthen their voice. This later became the guiding philosophy of the award-winning teacher education program I directed in Pennsylvania. It is what drove me to write the books I have written and why I am the person to tell this story.