Tom Durwood

This is my fifth year teaching English Composition and Literature at Valley Forge Military College. My students range widely in skills, from developmental cadets with middle-school skills to high-speed cadets on their way to West Point.

Every morning, I face several classrooms full of yawning cadets who care more about their tactical officers and tactical demands than about me and my demands. I have two major factors in my favor. First, my cadets enjoy the challenge of higher-order thinking. If I can surprise them and dare them to understand a new idea, I am halfway home. Second, if I can directly tie our classroom work to each student’s personal success, they will listen. Carefully. So I am constantly demonstrating that critical thinking of all kinds is their only salvation in a demanding job marketplace.

I have been named Teacher of the Year twice.

Undergraduate: Social Psychology (Harvard) Master in Business Administration (NYU) Masters in Literature (National University)

I edit an online journal, "The Journal of Empire Studies," which brings the scholarship of academic papers to the high school and college classroom. I wrote a newspaper column for the North County Times for seven years. I served as Executive Director of San Diego Habitat for Humanity. I have written an ebook on Teddy Roosevelt and the 25th Infantry, "Teddy's Tantrum," that has been called “the debut of a promising new voice in history,” by journalist Tim Pritchard I have posted a short story collection of coming-of-age stories set in key moments in history, "Ulysses S. Grant in China."