I have been a teacher in District 211 since 1998. I started at Palatine High School with one class in the fall of 1998, and nine years later I am full-time at Conant with four German classes and one ESL class. I did not begin my study of German until my sophomore year at Ripon College, in Ripon, Wisconsin, the alleged birthplace of the Republican Party (a dispute between the states of Michigan and Wisconsin still rages). I spent my junior year in Germany, the first two months in Prien am Chiemsee in Bavaria at a Goethe Institut, also the site of one of King Ludwig the 2nd's castles, the Herrenschloss. The next 10 months were spent at the University of Hamburg. One year after graduation, I returned to Hamburg and worked for nearly a year for an Indonesian shipping company.
I have returned to Germany several times, having chaperoned our exchange students from Conant at least five times. I enjoy accompanying our students and seeing how they react to a new culture and language. Although our students need not be students of German to participate in the exchange, it is always amazing to see how the students react and communicate with other teen-agers.
On a personal basis, I am married to Herr McIntyre, known to most people as Bob, and I have three children: Brooke, 27, UW '03, who lives in Madison, Wisconsin and has a beautiful daughter, Zoey and is expecting her second child in October; Colin, 25, KU '05, and Rhys, 21, senior at Columbia College in Chicago.