For almost twenty years I was an antique dealer. Before that I was a bank teller, a waiter, a restaurant manager, and a soda jerk. When my antique store burned down in 1993, I used the teaching certificate I had earned in college to get a job in the Charlestown projects, teaching middle school kids who had been asked to leave the Boston Public Schools. When my first child, Jake, was born in 1995, I opened another antique store on Mass. Ave. in Cambridge. Now antique dealing might sound like an interesting pursuit, but really one spends a lot of time schlepping large armoires to the fourth floor of walk-up apartments. By the year 2000, after the birth of my daughter Isabel, I looked in the mirror and realized I wasn’t a mover and a shaker, I just moved shaky furniture. I decided I wanted to do something that mattered and teaching fit that bill perfectly. For some reason, Beaver took a chance on me and for that I am eternally grateful. Because I spent so long away from academia, my classroom approach can be seen as unconventional. I think true learning is a messy process. One learns more from mistakes than from successes. I know I have.