Welcomed in Westborough

I've now completed the five transition days in the Westborough schools in June and three official days in July and I'm feeling very welcomed and excited to be here. Everybody I've met has been warm and welcoming and ready to help me on this crash course to learn as much as I can about the people and culture of the Westborough schools and how to best meet our technology needs.

I've met with the technology team as well as some teachers and administrators and had great conversations about the role of technology in teaching and learning, where we are now, and the opportunities that lie ahead of us. I'll talk about those in a future post, but for folks who I haven't met yet here are a few things about me:

• I grew up about 30 minutes away in house my dad build in far corner of an old apple orchard in Sherborn 
• I now live about 30 minutes away in Harvard, a town very much like Sherborn, with apple orchards, farm stands, and wooded conservation land with trails.
• My father was a junior high/middle school shop teacher for 36 years and for 2 of those years he had to deal with me in his class, an opportunity for which I am forever grateful for I was lucky enough to get a glimpse into his professional life.
• I played goalie with various Natick Comets youth hockey teams as a squirt, peewee, and bantam and played many games at Westborough's Northstar rinks.
• My first computer was a TRS-80 with 16K of memory and a cassette tape drive
• I attended UMass Amherst for 2 years as a computer engineer but left to try my hand at Aerospace Engineering at UT Austin. It wasn't for me and I only stayed for 1 semester. 
• I left college and worked for 15 years for a small, electrical engineering consulting firm doing programming, test and measurement, tech support, and IT.
• I returned to school to get a BS in Computer Science at UMass Lowell followed by a Masters in Educational Technology at Harvard Extension School.
• I was the Technology Coordinator for the Maynard Public Schools for five years and the Director of Instructional Technology and Media Services for the Shrewsbury Public Schools for four years.
• I love to cook and eat fresh, local foods purchased from farmer's markets and CSAs and grown at home. (I'm looking forward to checking out the Westborough Farmer's Market on Thursday afternoons)
• In the summer I grow tomatoes from sets that I start in the spring and I love working in the garden in the early summer mornings.
• I have two boys, aged 7 and 10, who love to read, play computer games, and make things
• We love to cross-country ski in the winter, preferring to skate-ski when conditions are good
• We have two cats and four hens
• I enjoy listening to most kinds of music

Throughout the summer and fall I'm looking forward to meeting more of the folks who work in the schools, learning more about what makes this a special place to work, and having conversations on the opportunities we see available through technology and how we can best seize them for the benefit of our students.

Thank you all for the opportunity to work with you and for welcoming me so warmly, I'm really looking forward to our time together.