Reflections
This fall, 2026, I will begin my 40th year as a community college teacher in California. I think teaching has always been part of my DNA. I can remember as far back as kindergarten wanting to be a teacher. I think it was always the annual cycle of beginnings and endings that I found exciting. The environment of school always felt comfortable, and it still does today. I look forward to the first day of classes as much today as I did 40 years ago.
My pursuit of a law enforcement career was a diversion as a high school freshman, but I think it was the path to teaching that was intended for me. I know I was always most happy when I was doing the line-level work. Supervision, management, and administration always took me away from what I loved the most. I think I was a decent supervisor and manager and probably okay as an administrator, but never as happy the further up the chain I moved. I think I would be a decent police chief, especially for a smaller town, but I don’t think I would have found happiness in that job.
In law enforcement, teaching at a police academy is a position of prestige. My interest in teaching was never fueled by my ego. I was invited at the age of 23 to start teaching at a brand-new police academy that started in Napa. It seemed like a long drive from where I was living and working at the time, but an amazing mentor and teacher of mine, Ollie Sansen, urged me to make that drive. I never left. A 4-hour block turned into a semester-length assignment that grew.
I’ll skip ahead and over my time as an agency supervisor and manager, as this turned out to be the worst decade of my career. I made the decision to leave work at a law enforcement agency to work full time at a police academy, first as a coordinator and then as the director in Napa. While this was a management role, I took the job only with the promise from the college president that I could continue teaching in the program. Throughout my 17 years in college administration, I taught classes every semester. This is what kept me grounded and happy. For many of these years, I also worked as the deputy chief of a very small law enforcement agency. I loved the work because I was able to push a patrol car in the field and spend more time actually doing policing and less pushing paper.
I’ve found myself unhappy at work twice in my career, and in both situations, I had promoted away from the line-level work I loved. I found myself working for inept administrators and decided to retreat to what I have always loved – teaching. It was indeed the best decision I ever made.
Today I’m teaching classes for three different colleges in the Bay Area. Three years ago, I was given the opportunity to pilot teaching classes in the early college program at New Technology High School. This turned out to be THE dream job I’ve been preparing for my entire career. High school students are amazing, incredible, complicated, and fragile. Like that 1983 invite, my role expanded, and I’m now at the high school five days a week. I look forward to the start of school every day as much as I did to that first class I taught 40 years ago.
This last year, I was honored by Napa Valley College with the McPherson Distinguished Teaching Award (teacher of the year). This came as quite a surprise and something that was never on my radar. I’ve never done this work for recognition or awards but am humbled and grateful to have been selected. The most significant aspect of this recognition is to be considered part of the group of prior award-winning teachers. These are people I’ve looked up to and regard as being the best.
I think of teaching as an art form; something always evolving and never perfected. It is part of my soul and at the heart of who I am. The annual cycle of beginnings and endings continues to really fit – even after 40 years. I could fill pages with lists of names of people who have mentored and guided me in one way or another. For all, I will be eternally grateful.