I retired from Township High School District 214 effective
June 30, 2016, and taught at Prospect High School in Mount Prospect for the
last 30 years. Before working at Prospect, I taught in the Special Education
Department at Forest View High School in Arlington Heights from 1984-1986 when
the school closed. My very first high school teaching and coaching position was
at Eureka High School in Eureka, IL, in 1980, where I taught Physical Education
and Health. Over the course of my career, I have coached football, wrestling,
and softball and have received several awards from my school, my district, and
the Illinois Council for Learning Disabilities in recognition of my skills as
an educator. As a Special Education Teacher and as the Coordinator of the
department, I had first hand experience in vocational and educational planning
for 17 years. During the 1999-2000 school year, I joined the World
Language/Social Studies Division at Prospect High School and taught a class
that would later become Human Geography.
I believe the highlight of the legacy I left at Prospect will likely be my Law & The Individual course. In 1999, I was assigned to teach this course, which was entitled American Problems at the time. My Division Head described it as a one-semester, discussion-oriented, course designed for those students that couldn't succeed in the more challenging electives such as Sociology or Psychology. He smiled sheepishly and handed me a sheet of paper with what he described as “the curriculum.” All it said was “talk about current events.” It was no wonder to me that there was only one section of the course being taught in those days. I immediately got to work and transformed the class into one that focused on Constitutional and Criminal Law, Crime, the Court System, Sentencing Systems, Prisons & Corrections, and Consumer Education. There are now 10 binders full of curriculum and Law & The Individual is easily the most popular elective at Prospect High School with 12 semester-long courses offered just this year. In fact, a few years ago, more students requested “Lni” than requested US History. And US History is a required course!
