I retired in 2000 after 32 years teaching in the Fremont, California Unified School District. My introduction to teaching was spending one summer teaching in a "Freedom School" in Jackson, Mississippi. I was hooked. Upon receiving my Teaching Credential I spent my first four years teaching US History/English Core to 8th graders. I then moved to the high school level and taught US History, American Government, Minority Groups, and created several elective courses such as a Humanities course called No Man Is An Island and a future studies course called Futures Conditional. For four years I founded a Summerhillian Alternative High School while continuing to teach in the public school. The experience was a joy and an affirmation of the hopes of what can happen when a small number of empowered, committed students and devoted, talented teachers control their educational environment. The experiment was doomed financially but I have always tried to bring that creativity into my classroom. In my last five years of teaching I, along with my two team teachers, created an American Studies course for the 11th grade. We had the same students in my history classes as they had in their American Literature classes. Skills learned in one class were directly involved in the materials and assignments of the other class.

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