About Us? We're Passionate About Education

Thanks for wanting to find out more about us. We're just normal people who have spent considerable time in classrooms, public and private, in both New York and California.

Our passion is to simply pose some ideas from the grassroots level of education that might help us all cut through the bureaucracy and misconceptions of education, then get on with the excitement and passion of teaching and learning.

John Hitchcock, Houghton College, B.A., Clarkson Univ., M.S.T

John's forty-plus years of teaching in both public and private schools have provided a broad expanse of experience.

He has taught physics, chemistry, math, computer programming, Bible and courses in Critical Thinking. He has taught several years at the college level as an adjunct professor, and served as an interim Dean of Faculty and Faculty Association President.

John is also a published author (Radical Excellence, booklocker.com) and has presented many workshops and seminars in various educational conferences.

Elaine Hitchcock, Houghton College, B.S., SUNY Potsdam, M.S.

Elaine's broad experience in education includes elementary and middle school classroom teaching in English, history, earth science and, yes, even Latin.

With a heart impassioned towards students who struggle both academically and socially, Elaine designed, developed and implemented a program that successfully enabled those students to become successful.

She is also trained in testing both children and adults for dyslexia and has provided tutoring to help those students learn effectively.

So that's a little bit about us, especially the typical school-stuff material. What's really important, however, is to get a sense of what it is that fuels our passion, to discover why we're doing this Internet thing.

WHY This Site Exists

Education and entertainment can coexist, but not in the way many students are doing it today. Their iPods and cell phones take precedence over books and brains.

Both of the founders of this site have spent our entire careers in the classroom. Neither of us want to go back to "the good 'ole days," but there are some things that would be good to see again.

• Critical thinking was a joy to behold
• The passionate pursuit of excellence was rewarding
• Strong parental support was reassuring
• Leadership unencumbered with bureaucracy was efficient
• Faculty room cynicism was minimal

In the eyes of many it's all the TEACHERS' FAULT. Others blame parents or even the ever-nebulous "society."

As you have learned about us, we hope you see that our goal for this site is to bring to the intellectual table the possibility that looking for blame might be wrong approach. It might actually be better for each individual, whether teacher, administrator, student or parent, to aim vigorously to achieve a level of radical excellence that brings us all to a high level of quality.

That Radical Excellence can be attained as we return to applying traditional values to how we do things, but simultaneously, step out of the status quo box and run the risk of trying some new things that might actually work really well.

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