About Me
M y name is Brother Bede. While not my legal name, it serves an important purpose within this project. The name is both a nod to the past and an aspiration for the future. It reflects my love of history, my desire to understand culture through the lens of the past, and my admiration for writers, artists, and thinkers who have adopted similar creative identities to explore ideas with greater freedom.
For nearly fifteen years, I have worked in education as a teacher, coach, mentor, and program leader. After earning a B.A. in English in 2011, I entered the workforce in the shadow of the 2008 financial crisis. Like many graduates of that era, I pursued opportunities wherever I could find them. Looking back, that experience served as an early reminder that the economic, political, and cultural forces we study in history are not abstract concepts. They shape the everyday lives and opportunities of ordinary people. By day, I worked as a public school substitute teacher, and by night I led educational after-school programs where I taught teenagers how to use digital media in creative and meaningful ways. It was through this experience that I discovered a gift for teaching and a vocation in education.
From there, I moved into public high school special education and athletic coaching while completing an M.Ed. in Teaching and Learning with a concentration in history. During that time, I was honored to be named Special Education Teacher Assistant of the Year. After completing my master's degree, I transitioned into teaching history and have since taught in public, military, college preparatory, and Christian schools.
I have been fortunate to receive recognition for my work in the classroom, including Teacher of the Term at my former institution in 2023–24 and Teacher of the Year at my current school in 2024–25. More importantly, these experiences have given me a broad perspective on how people of different ages, backgrounds, and abilities learn. What I have come to understand is that every person's path is unique, and education should help students discover not only what they can do, but who they are called to become. While education develops knowledge and skills, it also plays a role in something deeper: the formation of character, purpose, and ultimately the soul.
As I continue pursuing a Ph.D. in History, a degree I intend to complete by 2028, I seek to deepen my understanding of culture, storytelling, memory, and the forces both seen and unseen that shape human experience. This ongoing study informs not only my research, but also the way I teach, mentor, and engage with the world around me.
Through this project, I hope to create both digital and physical media that educates, tells meaningful stories, and inspires curiosity. In many ways, it brings together the different aspects of my life and vocation: teacher, writer, historian, creator, and lifelong learner. Whether through articles, artwork, photography, video, historical interpretation, or emerging technologies, my goal is to help people better understand the world, appreciate the stories that shape it, and engage more thoughtfully with both the past and present.
This project serves as both a historical endeavor and an artistic one. At times, it intentionally blurs the line between lived human experience and the emerging digital world to explore how history, culture, storytelling, and technology intersect. Whether working with a camera, a pen, a paintbrush, a computer, or emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, my interest remains the same: using those tools to better understand and communicate the human experience.
In many ways, this project is also a field study. I do not want to become an armchair historian, someone who studies the past only from a distance. I want to be shaped by the people I meet, the work I undertake, and the stories I encounter. History is ultimately about people, and some of its most valuable lessons are found not only in archives and books, but in conversations, communities, landscapes, and everyday life. Through living fully in the present, I hope to better understand the past and approach the future with faith, hope, and love.
A Hidden Life
Culture, Community & Calling
“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who have lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” — George Eliot
This quote has long inspired me. It’s a powerful reminder that history isn’t just written by kings and queens, lords and ladies—it’s built by ordinary people doing meaningful work, often unseen and uncelebrated. That belief drives how I teach, how I live, and why I’m building this project.
It’s also why I work under the pseudonym Brother Bede.
From a historical perspective, Bede is often called the "Father of English History" because his Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731 AD) provides the most important surviving account of early Anglo Saxon England. His work preserved information about the Christianization of England, the development of the English kingdoms, and many events that would otherwise have been lost. He was also among the first scholars to popularize dating events from the birth of Christ (Anno Domini), helping shape the way Western history would be recorded.
From the perspective of culture creation, Bede did more than record events. He helped create a shared English identity. By telling the story of diverse Anglo Saxon peoples as part of a common Christian history, he provided a narrative that united tribes, kingdoms, and regions into a broader cultural community. His writings, biblical commentaries, educational works, and promotion of learning helped preserve classical and Christian knowledge during the early Middle Ages, contributing to the intellectual and spiritual foundations of English and Western civilization.
In this sense, Bede was not merely a chronicler of culture; he was one of its architects. By preserving the past and giving people a common story through which to understand themselves, he helped shape the civilization he described. In an age marked by unprecedented connectivity yet often diminished common purpose, his example remains relevant. Bede reminds us that societies are not held together by technology alone, but by shared stories, values, and traditions that help people understand who they are, where they came from, and what they hold in common.
Like the monks who quietly preserved wisdom through centuries of uncertainty, I hope to honor the dignity of work, the beauty of vocation, and the quiet contributions of everyday people. The name is a tribute to that tradition and a reminder that teaching, craftsmanship in all its forms, and storytelling are sacred acts worth doing well, especially when no one is watching.
In many ways, my goal is to be a modern Brother Bede: not simply recording the world around me, but helping preserve and interpret the culture of my own age. That culture can be found in great books, films, works of art, current events, historical memory, and the everyday stories that shape our communities. Like Bede, I hope to help connect these threads into a larger story that reveals what is good, true, and beautiful, and what it means to be human in our time.
Virtue & Vocation
The Pursuit of Happiness - On Purpose.
As the digital world continues to encroach upon our lives, the value of what is tangible, personal, and real only grows.
This is why I believe that: the future is physical.
Yes, I know it may sound contradictory to promote this vision through a website and social media. But I do not believe we need to abandon technology altogether. Instead, we need to restore balance by putting technology in its proper place as a tool, not a master, both in the
classroom and beyond.
Technology is a remarkable servant, but it is a poor master. It is no substitute for real relationships, meaningful work, genuine community, and lived experience. The goal is not to reject technology, but to master it rather than be mastered by it. When used wisely, technology can support human flourishing. When it becomes the center of our lives, it often diminishes it. The future belongs to those who can embrace innovation while remaining firmly rooted in the physical world and the people around them.
This vision echoes Pope Leo XIV's recent encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, on artificial intelligence and human dignity. At its heart is a simple but profound reminder: technology must remain at the service of the human person, not the other way around. As the Pope writes, "Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together." The encyclical warns against reducing people to data, efficiency, or productivity and instead calls us to cultivate wisdom, virtue, community, and authentic human relationships.
In response, Pope Leo challenges us to become builders rather than passive observers, writing, "Let us not be afraid to get our hands dirty on the 'construction site' of our time. Like Nehemiah, let us pray, plan wisely and work perseveringly, placing God at the forefront of our actions and the human person at the center of our choices."
These same concerns lie at the heart of Crafting History. While technology can help us learn, create, and connect, it can never replace the experiences, relationships, shared stories, and moral formation that give life meaning.
I want to lead by example. I want to get my hands dirty, meet people face to face, and experience the world up close. I want to try new things, fail at them, and keep showing up anyway because that is what learning is really about. And I want students to see that for themselves.
Crafting History is my way of practicing what I teach. The surest way to change our lives and the lives of our students is by teaching and living with virtue. When we do, we do not simply pass on information; we pass on formation.
It helps us build something that lasts. Maybe even forever...
