Early Life. 1972–1985

Born in Cal­i­for­nia to an Ital­ian Amer­i­can father and Cana­di­an moth­er, my par­ents sep­a­rat­ed at a young age and we relo­cat­ed to Cana­da at the age of 6. Grow­ing up in Pitt Mead­ows, BC, I devel­oped a love for the out­doors (hik­ing, camp­ing, moun­tain bik­ing) and small town liv­ing. My first edu­ca­tion­al inter­ests also formed at the age of 8 through Geog­ra­phy after wit­ness­ing vol­canic ash falling in our region from the pyro­clas­tic erup­tion of Mount St Helens, Wash­ing­ton on May 18, 1980, near­ly 500 kms away.

Secondary School. 1985–1990

By the time I was enter­ing High School, my new step­dad, a car­pen­ter by trade, intro­duced me to home ren­o­va­tions and con­struc­tion, fur­ther expand­ing my inter­ests. Grade 8 came along and I was grate­ful to explore wood­work­ing and draft­ing which soon became two of my edu­ca­tion­al focus­es with­in high­school. I excelled quick­ly with­in both fields, chal­leng­ing myself to always redesign projects beyond expec­ta­tions of the teach­ers and achieve the sub­ject awards at every grade lev­el in both sub­jects from grades 8 through 12.

Post Secondary School. 1991–2000

I com­plet­ed a Cer­tifi­cate Of Trades Train­ing in Archi­tec­tur­al / Struc­tur­al Draft­ing from British Colum­bia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy in 1992, earn­ing Hon­ours and com­ple­tion with job place­ment more than a month ear­ly. How­ev­er, after employ­ment I quick­ly real­ized that an office job will not be the career I seek as I have too social of a per­son­al­i­ty to sit in my own office in soli­tude. I enrolled at Dou­glas Col­lege in 1994 to explore my options before trans­fer­ring to Simon Fras­er Uni­ver­si­ty in 1996 to com­plete a Bach­e­lor of Arts Degree in 1999 with Majors in Geog­ra­phy and Psy­chol­o­gy, along with Minors in Envi­ron­men­tal Edu­ca­tion and Edu­ca­tion­al Psy­chol­o­gy. 

Through­out this edu­ca­tion­al voy­age I start­ed explor­ing the idea of teach­ing. I vol­un­teered in numer­ous class­rooms, sub­ject areas and grade lev­els where I quick­ly found a love for teach­ing. In 2000 enrolled in the West Koote­nay Teacher Edu­ca­tion Pro­gram of the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia and com­plet­ed a Bach­e­lor of Edu­ca­tion Degree in 2001 with a teach­ing con­cen­tra­tion in Inter­me­di­ate Edu­ca­tion. It was here that I redis­cov­ered a love for small town liv­ing.

Early Career. 2001–2005

With my new­ly redis­cov­ered love for small towns (Pitt Mead­ows has since become a con­nect­ed sub­ur­ban neigh­bour­hood of Van­cou­ver) I relo­cat­ed to Ver­non, BC to embark on my teach­ing career. Pre­dom­i­nant­ly work­ing as a TTOC with sev­er­al semes­ter-long con­tracts I became very frus­trat­ed with con­tin­u­al lay­offs and dis­re­spect of the pro­fes­sion with the then Lib­er­al gov­ern­ment.

Exploring New Lands. 2005

An oppor­tu­ni­ty land­ed for me to pack every­thing and move to Culi­a­can, Mex­i­co where I estab­lished the Ide­al Eng­lish Learn­ing Cen­tre along with a teacher friend of mine. We devel­oped a com­plete busi­ness and mar­ket­ing plan where we ran our own after school pro­gram teach­ing Eng­lish and devel­oped the Ide­al Sum­mer week­ly camps for kids bring­ing Cana­di­an uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents down and pair­ing them with local teach­ers for mutu­al lan­guage and cul­tur­al growth. We fur­ther devel­oped and offered Ide­al Teacher recruit­ment ser­vices to bring Cana­di­an teach­ers down for employ­ment in local schools, and Ide­al Devel­op­ment to offer Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for local Mex­i­can teach­ers in the the­o­ry and ped­a­gogy we learned in our Teacher Edu­ca­tion pro­grams. How­ev­er excit­ing and reward­ing this expe­ri­ence was, it was rather short-lived for me (my busi­ness part­ner con­tin­ued our voy­age with­out me) as I found my dream posi­tion back in BC.

Current Teaching Career. 2005-Present

I relo­cat­ed to Fort St John, BC to con­tin­ue my teach­ing career at a Jr. Sec­ondary School which lat­er recon­fig­ured into a Mid­dle School. This was also my oppor­tu­ni­ty to be part of a small com­mu­ni­ty again. My ini­tial teach­ing posi­tion start­ed as part Wood­work and Draft­ing (two of my ear­li­er pas­sions in edu­ca­tion) along with Math and Eng­lish, all vary­ing with­in grades 8–10. My posi­tion has then mor­phed into its cur­rent assign­ment of pre­dom­i­nant­ly Wood­work 7–9 with a lit­tle Year­book and Com­put­ers 8/9. I could nev­er have dreamed I would be so for­tu­nate to teach my pas­sions like I am now.

Union Activist. 2007-Present

Ear­ly on in my career I became involved in union activism after being intro­duced to the Local Pres­i­dent in Ver­non while being a reg­u­lar TTOC for her. How­ev­er, due to the uncer­tain­ties of life as a TTOC, I did not tru­ly begin activism until relo­cat­ing to Fort St John. By 2007 I began explor­ing many dif­fer­ent union posi­tions, both local­ly and provin­cial­ly, with most roles still con­tin­u­ing on with today. 

At the school lev­el I have been the Staff Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Health and Safe­ty (2009–2016), Staff Depart­ment Head for Elec­tives (2009–2020), Staff Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment (2009-Present), and Staff Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Local Union (2009-Present). 

At the provin­cial lev­el I have been the Local Spe­cial­ist Asso­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent for the North Peace Tech­nol­o­gy Edu­ca­tors Asso­ci­a­tion (2007-Present), the BCTF Local Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the Peace Riv­er North Teach­ers Asso­ci­a­tion (2011–2023), and the BCTF Provin­cial Spe­cial­ist Asso­ci­a­tion Trea­sur­er for the British Colum­bia Tech­nol­o­gy Edu­ca­tors Asso­ci­a­tion (2012–2016).

Personal Life. Husband-Father-Crafter.

I met the love of my life Adri­ana in Feb­ru­ary 2014 and every­thing changed. It tru­ly was love at first sight, and on August 31, 2014 we were engaged. We had a beau­ti­ful out­door wed­ding on July 11, 2015 in Ver­non on my sister’s prop­er­ty when I final­ly had the plea­sure of meet­ing sev­er­al of her fam­i­ly mem­bers from Colom­bia. We had a sec­ond wed­ding on July 22, 2017 in a breath­tak­ing­ly beau­ti­ful Catholic church in San Pedro de los Mila­gros, Antio­quia, Colom­bia. We had our daugh­ter Gabriela (Gabi) on Octo­ber 9, 2018. She is the most amaz­ing, kind, car­ing, lov­ing, fun­ny, emo­tion­al, beau­ti­ful per­son who loves school, soc­cer, swim­ming, swings, camp­ing and dinosaurs. I can’t imag­ine my life with­out these two amaz­ing peo­ple I have the priv­i­lege of call­ing my fam­i­ly.

I have also had many oppor­tu­ni­ties to trav­el and live in many places over these years, pri­mar­i­ly through­out North and South Amer­i­ca. As my wife is orig­i­nal­ly from Colom­bia, we have many ties to this beau­ti­ful­ly diverse coun­try and have explored many regions inland and coastal, from the Ama­zon to the Caribbean. This past year we had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to pur­chase a beach­front con­do in Cov­eñas, Sucre, Colom­bia where we set up an airbnb rental invest­ment: Casa Paraí­so. We are quite for­tu­nate to be able to trav­el there year­ly and enjoy our time togeth­er as a fam­i­ly while also wel­com­ing oth­er fam­i­ly and friends to join us cre­at­ing life­long mem­o­ries togeth­er in our par­adise. 

As men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly, wood­work­ing has been a pas­sion of mine since bare­ly becom­ing a teenag­er. Since mov­ing to Fort St John I began design­ing, building/making, and sell­ing many per­son­al projects, from wood­crafts to oth­er crafts. Apart from tra­di­tion­al wood­work­ing machin­ery and tools, I have been uti­liz­ing many mod­ern tech­nolo­gies through my craft­ing like CNC Laser machines, CNC Router machines, 3D Print­ers, and Vinyl cut­ters with heat press­es. Over the years I have been sell­ing pri­mar­i­ly local­ly through Face­book Mar­ket­place, local Face­book groups, and my per­son­al Bar­ran­ti­Wood­work­ing page. Last year I began orga­niz­ing month­ly craft fairs at my school for “Dis­trict Staff and Com­mu­ni­ty Friends” which reg­u­lar­ly have over 30 tables for local crafters and ven­dors to show­case their skills and craft­ing inter­ests.

Future.

I am now begin­ning my next jour­ney towards a Mas­ters of Edu­ca­tion Degree in Edu­ca­tion­al Tech­nol­o­gy through the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vic­to­ria. This has been a goal of mine since fin­ish­ing my BEd in 2001 but life has tak­en me through my pas­sage­ways and detours to get me where I am now. Now is the time. I am excit­ed about this oppor­tu­ni­ty and where it may lead me, either sim­ply in expand­ing my teach­ing career with new tools and lit­era­cies, or take me into anoth­er lead­er­ship role as an admin­is­tra­tor. Time will tell.

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