For the next couple weeks I will be posting the Gratitude Journal prompts that are being given to my students and my response post.

The list of teachers who have had an influence in my life… where do I begin? I was that kid who kind’a hated reading time and went straight for the National Geographic or Life magazines when it was library time. But I have wonderful memories of Mr. Marx reading “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” or “James and the Giant Peach” to us. There were all the years I spent in Architecture/Drafting with Mr. Mitchell at MVHS that felt like a professional production environment. Scholarly Father Herbert Ryan at Loyola Marymount University introduced me to an academic/scientific approach to understanding history and religion that served me well when I began my own graduate studies at Fuller Seminary. Professor Colin Brown at Fuller Seminary who introduced me to Kierkegaard as a complicated thinker beyond the cardboard “bad boy of Existentialism” posited by Christian populist Francis Schaeffer,  whom Brown dismissed as probably never having read any Kierkegaard for himself (in the original Danish?). Journalism professor and Daily Titan mediator, Jay Berman, and his nonplussed style of managing all of the anxious reporters and egotistical editors endeavoring to produce a daily campus newspaper at Cal State Fullerton. My education professors at Chapman University, Connie Ryan and Suzanne SooHoo, who encouraged and tolerated my overly long reflection journal assignments. The whole experience of working online with my Pepperdine professors and cadre-mates in the early 2000s when working on my ed-tech masters and unfinished doctorate… I have had a multitude of wonderful educators, mentors and friends who have influenced the person and educator that I would eventually become. Thanks y’all. I am almost one-half-a-year away from ending this chapter of my career/education.