Fall … leaves, chestnuts, rain

                  drizzles despair searching

                              for hope in our hearts.

This is my first teaching appointment at KIS.  I have lived in Ukraine for a total of 11 years.  I first came to Ukraine in the summer 1992 when it was a much different place.  Traffic jams along “Prospect Peremogy” were unimaginable.  Waiting occurred in the bread line, the milk store line, the cashier line, every line.  In 1993, I moved to Sumy, Ukraine, and taught for five years in the Foreign Language Department of Sumy State University.  In 1998, Lena agreed to marry me and we moved back to Texas (my home state) in the US.  After the birth of our sons  (Philip and Ruslan) in 2000, we moved back to Kyiv in the summer of 2001.  I taught Composition, British Literature and Biblical Studies courses at the International Christian University—Kyiv until June, 2007.  While in Kyiv, we have been blessed with two more sons— Jospeh (2001) and Roman (2007).

I enjoy teaching.  I think I have been a teacher since I was about 5 years old playing school with my stuffed animals and older sister as students.  Originally, desiring to teach Chemistry and Biology, I switched to Literature and Writing as I discovered the ability to wrestle with the many questions life tosses us in the process of living. 

A perfect day of teaching would be when the students become so caught-up in the discussion of the story that all I have to do is to sit back, listen, and learn.