ABOUT

My mother sometimes reminded me that I was born with my eyes wide open and that I learned to run before I learned to walk. Born in 1958, I am the oldest of six children and a Baby Boomer. A Libra born in the Chinese year of the Dog and the Indigenous month of the Raven, I was always sensitive to injustice and easily seduced by idealism. Learning to value the ground under my feet and to respect my pragmatic brothers and sisters has been a lifelong endeavor. Understanding when to fight and when to walk away has always been challenging, but the question has always mattered to me.

Raised on Minneapolis’ Northside in a Catholic blue collar community, I learned that faith and hard work went hand-in-hand. I attended St. Bridget School for eight years and was influenced by the Benedictine sisters who embraced the progressive spirit of the 1960s as they championed the civil rights Movement, Vatican II moral teachings, and opposed the war in Vietnam. My father owned his own barber shop and worked six days a week while he also served as a church trustee and volunteered his time to serve the poor at various Catholic organizations. My mother also volunteered at the school and at church while keep up with household chores and interests of her children. She took work at a local clinic when I was in college. Like many of my generation and Catholic blue collar background, my youth was a time to learn all about delayed gratification, responsibility, cooperation, service to others, the beauty of rituals, and the necessity of respecting the dignity of each person regardless of their color, income, family situation, age, or religion.

I earned a BA in Religious from the College of St. Scholastica (Duluth, MN) in 1980. In 1983, I completed an MA is History at Slippery Rock university in Pennsylvania, where I wrote a thesis on the Catholic Church’s response to the American Labor Movement. These studies introduced me to world religions, Catholic history, various theories of social justice, liberation theology, and critiques of  American culture. They also invigorated my political activism on behalf of women’s right, LGBTQ rights, and resistance to Fascism in governance.

I taught History, Psychology and Ethics and Media for 23 years in Catholic secondary schools in Oakland and San Francisco. I created curricula that brought the voices of the despised and marginalized into historical narratives, and designed exercises that prompted students to consider the morality of our national conduct. I also studied Russian language and history at the University of California, Berkeley and how to decode and teach the SAT at Ivy West. In 1992, I taught for a semester at the University of Rostov in Russia and guest lectured about American education and culture in several cities.

I completed a Doctorate in Education in 2003 at the University of San Francisco (a Jesuit institution) and wrote a thesis, Moral Development, Cold War Pedagogy, and Catholic Secondary Education, that examined the extent to which curriculum and textbooks facilitated an understanding of the Cold War from multiple perspectives, disclosed the facts about the financial and human cost of Cold War policies, and guided students to consider the moral obligations of historians relative to creating fair and accurate narratives.

For seven years, I worked as a school administrator as Director of Curriculum and Professional Development, Dean of Students, and Vice-Principal. In 2007, I left Catholic education and became a faculty consultant at San Francisco State University. There I developed workshops and resources that helped instructors design courses, students assessments, student-centered instructional strategies, and  accessible curriculum. In 2009, I traveled to Saudi Arabia and facilitated several workshops for professors interested in student-centered learning, course design, and Bloom’s Taxonomy. My research interests include literacy, critical thinking, and historical pedagogy.

In retirement, I volunteer my services to local elected officials and St. Bridget Church. I  enjoy artistic hobbies, running, hiking, music, writing poetry, and watching documentaries. Since my return to Minneapolis, I have been studying the causes of its economic turmoil and social conflict. The City of Lakes is a mosaic of the best and the worst of human nature — the successes and failures of saints and scoundrel’s — all of which begs the question of what a city can do to overcome what is lethal to its spirit and material existence.