Eric has worked for the public school system in Massachusetts, the Massachusetts community college system, the National Science Foundation (via a grant through Boston University) and the Museum of Science, Boston.  Before that he was a corporate trainer, a database manager, a retail store manager, a bowling alley mechanic and tour guide in a millionaires flower garden.  Eric holds a masters degree in biology from Saint Joseph’s University in Hartford, MA and holds his bachelors in neuroscience from Drew University in Madison, NJ.

Both of my parents are teachers so my preparation to become one started rather early.  Rather than supporting me both of my parents wanted to protect me from teaching, claiming that the pay was no where near enough to the amount of work you would have to put out.  Also, the there just wasn’t a lot of respect for the profession (both then and now).

This whole situation reached a head when I took an educational psychology course as part of my neuroscience undergraduate program.  My mother took an afternoon off from work to come to my school to threaten me no to become a teacher.  “If you do”, she said, “Your father will break your left leg and I will break your right.”  I promised not to go into teaching.  (My mother’s Bayonne accent was terrifying.)

Skip ahead 15 years and I’ve gone through careers as a bench microbiologist, research scientist, retail store manager, hospital administrative assistant and database programmer, the last of which had just laid me off right as my wife and I had just purchased our first house.  I was fresh out of ideas on what to do when my wife pointed out “At each of your past jobs you’ve become the trainer, maybe you should try teaching.”  Given my promise to my mom all those years ago I hadn’t really put that all together until then, but it seemed like a good fit.  I di some substituting to make sure I enjoyed working with teenagers (I did) and then I got an opportunity to fill in for a science position at Dracut high School.  That’s were I stayed for 19 years.