Hello, my name is Rob. I'm a graduate of the University of Northern Iowa, The University of Iowa, and I'm an English teacher at Valley High School (Iowa) in West Des Moines, Iowa. I have a wife, Heather, two sons, Gabriel and Clark, and a Shih tzu named Sophie. Gabriel was named after Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Clark was named after Clark Kent. Though I teach English Literature, Shakespeare, and Creative Writing, I'm also interested in Evolutionary psychology, Astronomy, Cosmology, the history of Ancient Greece, the psychological study of Intelligence (trait), SETI, and Philosophy -- especially ethics, bioethics, Aristotle and Preference utilitarianism. I am a Bright, a member of the Council for Secular Humanism, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Planetary Society, and a proponent and teacher of Great Books. I also support The ONE Campaign and Oxfam International.
My favorite authors include Aristotle, Plato, Shakespeare, Aldous Huxley, Coleridge, Jane Austen, Willa Cather, Walt Whitman, Philip Roth, E.B. White, Howard Gardner, Martin Gardner, Carl Sagan, Douglas Hofstadter, Peter Singer, Isaac Asimov, Orson Scott Card, and Steven Pinker.
