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My life on a page.

I’m Phil.  I’m 44.  I grew up outside of  New York City in a town called Jericho, a Long Island suburb.  I went to college in Baltimore.  I attended Johns Hopkins University and got  my undergraduate degree in political science. Then I went to law school.   New York University School of Law (J.D. ’90).  Passed the bar in both New York and New Jersey.

I went to work at one of those large Manhattan law firms, but after less than a year, I realized this was so not for me.  I always loved teaching, loved working with kids.  That’s what I needed to be doing.  So I went back to school and earned a master’s degree in elementary education from Long Island University.

While pursuing my master’s, I began teaching in the New York City Public Schools. For the first five years, I taught fifth and sixth grade in the Tremont section of the South Bronx. A lot of the time, we lacked the basics – paper, pencils, chalk for the blackboard.  So I got creative in the classroom.   I built my language arts curriculum around music and song lyrics.  Dave Matthews, Barenaked Ladies, Blues Traveler, and Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean of The Fugees all came to my class.  My class was featured on the CBS television program, Coast to Coast.

I transfered schools in 1998 and went to teach at P.S. 333, the Manhattan School for Children located in Upper Manhattan. For the next six years, I taught English and American History to the sixth, seventh and eighth graders, and once again, I got to use my classroom as a playground for creativity.  The school integrated music and the arts into the curriculum.  We worked with Lincoln Center, theatre companies, Off-Broadway shows, and many museums and cultural institutions.

While I was working at MSC, my first picture book came out.  I incorporated my writing experiences into my teachings. As a year-end project, the kids chose a topic in history or an historical figure, researched the subject area, and shaped it into their own pictures books to be shared with the kids in the younger grades.

I left the classroom in 2006 in order to write full time. I now have a whole bunch of picture books (Shoeless Joe & Black Betsy,The Shot Heard ‘Round the World, Twenty One Elephants, The Greatest Game Ever Played, Turkey Bowl, The Hallelujah Flight and The Unforgettable Season), a couple teen novels (Playing the Field, Busted),  and along with Loren Long, a New York Times bestselling middle grade chapter books, Sluggers!

But I wasn’t entirely finished with teaching.   In July 2007, I began chaperoning student-volunteer trips to Hurricane Katrina-ravaged New Orleans.  I founded The NOLA Tree, a non-profit service organization and served as the Executive Director as we worked with other non-profit and service organizations on community building and development projects.

Now in 2012, it’s on to even bigger and better things! It’s shaping up to be an epic year!

Oh, by the way, this is me juggling and dancing to Lady Gaga!

If you wish to use a photo of me, here are a few to choose from!

(Click the above thumbnails to see bigger versions!)