5 Things You Wish You Did Or Didn’t Know About Me Meme

Doug at Borderland sucked me into this:

1. I was going to be a professional photographer – I had been accepted to a photography school when I was asked by a friend to shoot publicity photos at the Outdoor Education camp he ran for 6 to 16 year olds. I went planning on staying for 2 days – I stayed for 4 weeks and the next 2 summers – hiking, rock climbing, rope swinging, rope bridge building, survival training, nature interpretation – changed schools – became a teacher.

2. My last name is Crosby and I actually am related to Bing Crosby. Not a very close relation – my Dad’s grandfather and Bing’s grandfather were brothers. My dad and Bing worked at the same logging camps owned by their uncle Lloyd in Washington and Oregon during the depression – Bing didn’t last long, found something else he liked better.

3. I like doing projects around the house – building a deck, landscaping (not necessarily good at it, just like it) – I also like visiting national parks – so last summer when we “inherited” a large number of redwood boards I combined these 2 interests and built a boardwalk around one side of my house like you see in national parks. Have some overdue landscaping projects to do this summer after a trip to the East Coast.

4. I have taught now for 26 years, starting in Oregon, then California and now Nevada. I’ve taught in private religious schools and public schools – both in very high socio-economic schools and very low socio-economic schools. I use technology a lot with my students, but if I had to make a choice I’d rather have the money for a bus and take field trips about once a week to places like a grocery store and a farm and a large office building and the house around the corner where someone has a vegetable garden they are proud enough of to talk to the kids about, and on a boat in the middle of Lake Tahoe and to the top of a mountain peak and to a big city, and a sandy-hot desert and a redwood forest when it is dripping wet from a heavy fog (and lick banana slugs) and a ball game and more. But then I’d want the technology for the photos and video and journals and audio recordings and a way to share them and my students’ learning.

5. I have always dreamed of visiting Antarctica – fell in love with it when I saw a TV special about the race to the South Pole when I was about 10 years old. I even applied to go there through the “Teachers Experiencing Antarctica“ program the last year they had the program – I still haven’t been : ( – but I have walked on glaciers in Alaska, Montana, California and Canada.

But, enough about me … tell us about you.

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5 thoughts on “5 Things You Wish You Did Or Didn’t Know About Me Meme

  1. I’m with you about the field trip bus. Seems like we should be able to apply some Title 1, or maybe some grant money, toward buying one for the school. I used to think that Antarctica would be a fun trip. Now I live near the Arctic Circle. It was a good move, even if it was in the opposite direction. Merry Christmas.

  2. I like your take on life Brian! I’ve been through the whole edu thing: outdoor adventure, the technology guy, plain bog standard primary classrooms and even a secondary school science teacher for several entertaining years. Now I’m the wrong side of pensionable age and I’ve suddenly got the passion to try and promote good rock climbing rope work amongst our free spirited adventurers. Too many near misses. Too many up close tragedies.