I was born and went to school in the Bronx and majored in linguistics at CCNY. At the end of my sophomore year I traveled abroad for the first time to attend a summer session in Greece. After another year of school in New York, I returned to Europe, hitchhiked around until my money ran out and ended up living in a kibbutz in Israel for about a year. Then I moved to Jerusalem where I worked and studied for another year. I returned to Europe and after more hitchhiking, worked at a hospital in Switzerland. When I got back to New York after a three-year absence, I completed my undergraduate studies.

I enrolled in a graduate program in Classics in Iowa City, earning an MA but never even beginning work on a doctoral dissertation. Instead I spent the next five years trying to eke out an existence on a five-acre plot of land.

From there it was off to Liberia as a Peace Corps volunteer. It was there my career as an English language teacher began. When I returned to the US, I decided to spend the rest of my life traveling to new places and teaching English. To that end I enrolled in a MATESL program in Vermont where many of my ideas about learning and teaching started to take shape. After a brief internship in Mexico and a short-term job in Boston, I embarked for South Korea where a teaching job awaited.

After a few years in Korea where I got married, I returned to the US with my wife and infant daughter. I worked at an intensive English program in North Carolina, where our second daughter was born. We lived for the next two decades Colorado where I continued to teach, direct a program and become involved in curriculum development. Our latest move, several years ago, brought us to Oregon where we now reside.