The Many Faces of Chepe

Teaching

• My B.A. from Rice University (Class of 1991) is in English, though I dabbled with a lot of Space Physics and Classics as well.

• I recently (2004) completed my AMI elementary Montessori certification at Loyola College in Columbia, Maryland, and then completed an M.Ed. in December of 2005.

• My teaching resumé (use Adobe Acrobat Reader to view: username "interview" and password "lockett", all lower-case.)

• After a dozen years or so of teaching various subjects to adolescents (English, math, Latin, some science and history; usually middle school, some high school) I'm now the Director of External Affairs for The Post Oak School, just about a mile from our house. I get to "spread the word" about Montessori education through the school's weekly newsletter, web site, press releases, and parent education.
• In the summer of 2006 I served as the mentor teacher for the English department of the Summerbridge program (aka The Breakthrough Collaborative) at Episcopal High School. We had an awesome group of faculty, both high-school and college students; I both learned and offered a lot.
• I'm also a Community Associate for Baker Residential College at Rice, which lets me pass on my worldly wisdom, such as it is, to college undergraduates. I've now spent twenty years working with the Baker Shakespeare festival as actor, director, designer, and adviser (not, thankfully, all at once!)

• Several college classes or literary web pages have linked to my online collection of papers and essays, Grist for the Mill. I'm proud and glad to share.

Playing

• That's "playing" as in "plays" -- I'm a great fan of live theatre, whether acting, directing, or sitting in the audience.

• My theatrical resumé (use Acrobat Reader to view: username "interview" and password "lockett", all lower-case.)

• Favorite playwright? No contest: William Shakespeare. Close runners-up, however, are Alan Ayckbourn and Tom Stoppard. No, really, I'm not British.

• Rice Players gave me my real start in acting (and directing!), and still do great shows; including, in the fall of 2007, letting me direct David Auburn's Proof in Hamman Hall. I find it a great blessing that Rice University doesn't have a theatre department: actors have some other course of study which can add to their art (is there anything as sterile as uninformed acting?), and a theatrical community without academic politics is free to gather participants from all ages and fields of study.

• Baker Shakespeare Theatre is Houston's oldest Shakespeare festival (five years senior to that other one). I've worked with "BakerShake", as undergraduate, alumnus, and college associate, sometimes acting and sometimes directing, for nineteen splendid years: over half my life! I'm particularly proud of my five directing stints: 1997's The Winter's Tale, 1999's A Midsummer Night's Dream, 2003's King Lear, 2005's The Taming of the Shrew, and 2006's Cymbeline.

Computing

• I've worked as a web designer, technical editor and desktop publisher, and database engineer. All of which usually paid more than education, but were far less fun.

• I love Apple computers: my personal machine is "Prospero", a dual-2GHz (PowerPC) G5. For travel and note-taking, I have "Ariel," a 1.2GHz 12" iBook.

• Way cool Mac software: OS 10.4 "Tiger" (duh!); Adobe's Creative Suite; the inexpensive imposition software BookLightning; the inexpensive but capable music software Harmony Assistant; the free FTP/SFTP client CyberDuck, the book-cataloging software Delicious Library.

• I'm also an evangelist (over a dozen converts made so far!) for Palm personal organizers. I used to be the sort of person whose wallet was stuffed full of little, easily forgotten or misplaced scraps of paper: no more, thanks to "Amanuensis," my valiant Palm Tungsten T3, the third I've had.

• Indispensable Palm software: The Missing Sync, DateBk6, Checklist, SplashID, MathU, MassTransit, MegaClock.

• Fun gadgets: I'm having fun playing with a Wacom Intuos3 graphics tablet and my Panasonic DMC-FZ20 digital camera.

• I suppose I should mention it here, since it runs on Linux: my wife and I also couldn't live without our TiVo. I don't think I've watched live TV in months, and it's splendid to have the latest NewsHour or Daily Show (or Doctor Who and Torchwood!) on tap at any hour of the day or night.

Frolicing

• Reading: I read voraciously, when I have time -- fantasy and science fiction, mysteries, history, biography, science and technology, news, commentary on current issues and events, etc.

• Role-playing Games: Not the computerized variety, but the original pencil-and-paper kind. Okay, they're a bit geeky, but wonderful exercise for imagination and improvisation. My favorite system is again (in fourth edition!) GURPS, which I used to play with a small group (now, alas, dispersed). I've tried to avoid it, but I confess a certain excitement about 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons, coming in 2008. I also remain an unmitigated Traveller fanboy.

• Recumbent Bicycling: The picture shows me on my Linear "Mach III" CLWB recumbent bicycle "Carol" (short for "Carolus Linearus"; yes, it's a bad biology-history pun.), during the 2000 MS 150 charity bike ride from Houston to Austin. 2008 should mark my sixth year taking part in this event.

• Music: In summer of 2000 I at last achieved my dream of beginning bagpipe lessons. I already sing (high baritone) and play the recorder: before I die, I'd love to add the Renaissance cornetto, the Australian didgeridoo, and the electronic theremin. Oh, and it would be cool to do central Asian throat singing too....

• Woodturning: In the fall of 2005, my wife and I bought a Jet 1236 lathe. We're stil total beginners, but have had fun exploring by making palm gavels for Post Oak, gladius hilts for Cymbeline, bowls for ourselves, etc.

<www.io.com/~jlockett/index.shtml> Last Modified: Tue 2 October 2007