"I have been an educator for over 40 years, beginning as an elementary school tutor for Hispanic kids and moving on to teaching and training Native American bilingual teachers, teacher aides and writers and illustrators of Native American curriculum and literature. As an administrator of bilingual/bicultural programs I planned the educational careers of my Native American personnel and tutored them through difficult subjects. I spent twenty years as a teacher, tutor and counselor of American Indians in the southwestern US and in French-speaking Quebec, Canada.

In Quebec I also developed curriculum for and taught subjects in French to Native American students "dropping back in" to a community-run junior high-school. When I returned from Canada, I taught junior high and high school (Social Studies and English,) and then taught community-college classes in English composition, Reading, and Bible. I ended my full-time career as a tutor and then mentor to at-risk high-school students. I have tutored in every subject, and always with young people with backgrounds or family situations that put them at a disadvantage. I love finding the unique talents of each student and helping them to exploit these doors to discovery.

I am a poet who attacks philosophy as insight and perspective, not a list of principles. I counsel my students to "look at it this way!"

I am an award-winning and published author who has also taught English at a variety of levels and both to native and non-native speakers. I teach English as a tool of self-expression for native speakers and of survival and integration for non-native speakers. That is, though I am very sensitive to correct grammar and usage, my instructional and tutorial approach builds on communication, relating to people, being somebody. I try to awaken in every student both the hope of saying something valuable and the desire to couch his or her language in the finest form.

In high school, I learned to read and write French easily, but I had to suffer through years of living" less...