Welcome!

Thanks for visiting. This is really just a site designed to hold all my work in one place. Feel free to look around. I have a philosophy of education blog (and have recently started making education videos), original classical piano compositions (both sheet music and recordings), and old papers, articles and talks given. 

-Mike

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• Teacher

I’m currently an English and History Teacher at Fusion Academy in Austin, TX. 

• Thinker

I’ve studied philosophy, rhetoric, and all things Ancient Greek for many years. I still enjoy these pursuits and integrate them into my classroom thoughts and practices.

For philosophy I always look to Aristotle (as Aquinas says, he is “The Philosopher”) but I also lean on Ayn Rand, JJ Gibson, Giambattista Vico, and really any ideas coming from Ancient Greece and the Enlightenment thinkers who use the word Reason with a capital R.

Rhetoric for me is really esthetics. I tried to study esthetics at school, but found the teachers weren’t discussing what I thought esthetics was. Luckily I found that they were discussing esthetics in the rhetoric department.

With rhetoric I usually look to the Ancient Greeks first, mainly Isocrates, Longinus, Aristotle, and the ancient Sophists. With some reservations I’ve found interesting things in modern thinkers too, like Kenneth Burke, Chaim Perelman, IA Richards, and my teacher at UT, Dr. Jeffrey Walker.

• Musician

I’ve always thought that the principles that make up a good lecture, good paper, good speech, good story, and a good piece of music (and even a good life) are pretty much the same. In the end, a composition is a composition. So in many ways, I see music as a natural part of my philosophical and educational studies. Plus, it’s just fun to play piano and write compositions.