Freitag, 6. Mai 2011

Intro

I'm a native New Yorker and a graduate of The High School of Performing Arts in Acting. From 1978-80 I attended the Juilliard Theatre Center and then went to Bennington College, where I majored in Literature & Languages (emphasis: Creative Writing) and minored in Music. After graduation I worked for a couple of years as an editorial assistant in New York, the classic English major job, and then got into the Iowa Writers' Workshop. I started doing journalism at Iowa, becoming the main arts critic for The Daily Iowan, and stayed in Iowa City after graduation to work at the University of Iowa Foundation as a staff writer and to finish my first novel. Eventually I moved back to New York and started freelancing, which I've been doing ever since.

After a couple of years back in the New York metro area I met a German guy in a bar across from Lincoln Center and fell in love, which might be regarded as a strange move for a nice Jewish girl from the Bronx. It was right after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and we started a long-distance relationship. After 18 months I moved to Berlin; the relationship fell apart soon after, but I had started singing in "kneipen" (pubs) and formed a band so I stayed. I worked as an English teacher, correspondent and music teacher as well as gigging regularly in Berlin and environs. I was one of the first Western performers to work with East German musicians, and we toured the now-defunct East German youth club circuit for a few years.

In 1993 the former "Radio In the American Sector" (RIAS) television news station was taken over by Deutsche Welle TV, the German equivalent of the BBC World Service. I started working there as a translator and voiceover specialist, and eventually worked my way up to producing English-language adaptations of half-hour documentary programs on everything from the history of Santa Claus to the science of aging.

I met my now ex-husband at a meditation weekend in the Bavarian Woods (and thereby hangs a tale, but it's not one I tell much anymore). He lived in a small mountain village outside of the town of Rosenheim, about halfway between Munich and Salzburg, and I moved there full-time when we got married. Soon afterward, I became the German correspondent for The Hollywood Reporter. At the same time I was still teaching music and recording my own songs as well as working for Deutsche Welle.

In 2003, at the age of 42, I became a mother. As is so often the case, the stress of parenting put enormous strain on my marriage. I moved to Ohio with my daughter in June 2009, to a place that was about a 10-minute walk from my brother and his wife's house.

After an adjustment year, I started the post-baccalaureate teacher licensure program at Cleveland State University. That's where I am now. I still teach piano and early childhood music, and I'm the Song Leader at Fairmount Temple in Beachwood, OH. I also sub, although not as regularly now that I'm in school. I've recently written the first draft of a young people's novel telling the Exodus story from the point of view of two 12 year-old Israelite twins who are about to become slaves to Pharaoh. I'm calling it THE GOSHEN TRILOGY, and planning to e-publish in the fall once I've had a chance to revise it.

My goal is to be a high school English teacher. I'm thinking of this blog as an unstructured opportunity to reflect on teacher training in this country at a time when education is such a controversial topic. Please feel free to comment, to "like" the blog or to contact me on Facebook.

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