When I was 25 years old, after a couple of years working several jobs, I decided to go back to university to be a teacher. Not long after this decision, I was at a hunting camp having a conversation with my friend and his father about my plan. My friend’s father, a successful entrepreneur had some advice for me. He told me that if I became a teacher, I needed to focus on teaching students how to think and communicate and not just have them memorize a bunch of information.

Though this sounded like solid advice at the time, it didn’t occur to me then that I had no idea how to describe, let alone teach thinking.

However, I doggedly pursued this idea over the years in my chosen profession. Standing here today, I have to admit that I find it awfully amusing that in my first 15 years pursuing the question: “What is thinking, and how do we teach it?” I never stopped, looked around and rested on the realization that no one I knew had a precise and practice answer to this question.

I’d prefer readers test the validity of my ideas against reality to arrive at their own conclusions about the usefulness of my mental models. However, some people might like to know a little about me.

Here is a start: I taught grades 7-12 Social Studies in Vermont public schools for 21 years. During 18 of those years, I coached multiple sports with students grades 3-12. For 20 of those years I also worked seasonally in the agriculture, construction and restaurant industries trying to get more perspectives on how to best prepare students as thinkers. Since leaving the regular education classroom, I’ve been a 504 Coordinator, Assistant Director of Educational Support Teams (district level), Special Educator, Independent Study Teacher/Coordinator and part-time Tutor for incarcerated students taking community college classes. I earned my BA in 1994 in Asian Studies & US History, a teaching certificate in 1997 and an M.Ed in Interdisciplinary Education Studies in 2025.