All About Me

 

Hello,

     My name is Christopher Yack. My journey to teaching has been winding and circuitous. After graduating high school in 1990, I attended college for a year before dropping out to pursue a career on Wall Street. I started out as a "runner" on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. My duties entailed running errands for floor traders. Within a year I was offered a position as a backup clerk for a specialist firm. These are the elite trading firms in charge of making markets, facilitating trades, and maintaining market liquidity. I spent my time in this position maintaining commission bills and learning everything I could about trading stocks. The apprenticeship to become a specialist broker usually takes about ten years. I was right in the thick of the curve and after ten years became a specialist broker, a member of the New York Stock Exchange, and Vice President at Bank of America. A few years down the line, automated trading disrupted human based trading, and it was time to start my second career. I completed my undergraduate degree and a master's degree in Elementary and Special Education. I began teaching kindergarten, Universal Pre-K, and Special Education. I found a district teaching position in Uniondale, New York, where I have been for the past ten years teaching Pre-k and STEAM. I'm married and have two daughters. One is a graduate of SCAD (Savannah College of Art & Design), the other is studying architecture at Georgia Tech and is a member of Navy ROTC.

     The purpose of this blog is to present information accrued during the course CI6163 Technologically Driven Curriculum and Social Media at the American College of Education. In this course I have explored digital tools and how they can be implemented into instruction following best practices. The blog will act as learning journal and a place where I have accrued some of the artifacts aligned with what I have learned in this course.

    Some of my hobbies include cycling and playing acoustic guitar. I began racing mountain bikes in the early 1990's and competed in races up and down the East coast. I transitioned to road cycling where I competed in hundreds of road races in New York City, including Central Park, Prospect Park, Flushing Meadows Park, Randalls Island, and Floyd Bennet Field. At 50 years old, I hung up my racing wheels but still manage to ride 4,0000 miles each year.

     Some of my professional goals include completing a doctoral program and earning an Ed.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with a concentration in Special Education and becoming an administrator in my school districts special education department. When I leave the teaching profession, I want to work for an education company and deliver professional development to teachers around the country.