• His first year in New Orleans, while the band was trying to make a name for itself, he worked at an investment firm. I was making money, but I found it soulless. Take numbers on paper and move them here to here. There was noth­ing creative about it. It just didn't fit me. I did it for a year.
• He sent out resumés to various private schools, including Brother Martin. Jesuit offered him a position, and he taught English there for three years.
• Tom left Jesuit to devote more time to the burgeoning music career. I wonder­ed, "If I quit this job, will I ever get another one? But if I don't do it now [music career], I never will." I did that for two years. We traveled all over the country. It was a tough life but a good experience.
  
• Between tours, he substitute taught all over the area, public schools as well as private. It was beneficial to my career. I saw the inside workings of lots of schools. Substituting made me more confident of my ability to walk into any room and handle business. My classroom management was better.
• He sent out resumés again in 2002 and was hired by Brother Martin, where he taught for two years.
• In 2004, he returned to St. Martin's, one of the schools where he had substi­tuted. They pitched this amazing deal that was too good to pass up. Who knows what would have happened if Katrina hadn't happened? Everything happens for a reason. It's amazing how God worked all this out.
• When Katrina hit, the members of Idletime were scattered across the country, never to reunite as a band. Tom returned to New Orleans but, lacking seniori­ty, lost his job at St. Martin's when the school cut one position in each de­partment because of reduced enrollment.

That led to his return to Brother Martin.

• After helping gut and rebuild houses for the rest of the Katrina year, Tom wondered if Brother Martin would hire him back.
• New principal Greg Rando needed someone to cover senior English the last three periods of the day. That fit Tom's plans perfectly. He renovated his house each morning and taught in the afternoon.
• Greg offered a full-time position the next year. I told Greg, I've found my home. I totally dedicated myself to Brother Martin.
• He has enjoyed teaching the junior AP course. Fellow department member Dean Songy encouraged Tom to join him as an AP reader, which he has done for four years.
• He has been the moderator for the literary magazine, just as he was at Jes­uit and St. Martin's.
• This year, he's the department chair. I want to continue some things we've al­ready put in place - uniform standards and progression from one grade to the next for grammar and writing. I'm entering the job at a time of major change here in terms of devices for each student. The big question for us in English is, To what degree is the use of the individual devices a benefit?

• Idletime disbanded when Katrina scattered its members hither and yon.
• "Part of the generation of transplanted musicians who created a new land­scape in New Orleans during the latter part of the 1990s," as one article put it, Tom worked as a freelance guitarist for a few years before starting his own rock band to perform his original compositions.
• He self-produced and released an album, "Spinnin' My Wheels," that's availa­ble on CD and iTunes. It features ten original songs with influences from rock, blues, and outlaw country.

• During the post-Katrina chaos in 2006, he contacted CityBusiness magazine, which had lost a number of its writers. The editor said, "Send us your clips [pre­vious articles]." I said, "I don't have any, and how can I get any if no one gives me the opportunity?" He finally said, "We'll try it." He assigned me an article on gas prices. I talked to people who predicted whether they would go up or down.
• He has also written for Louisiana Health and Fitness, a monthly magazine. They got me writing sports features. News writing taught me how to tell the facts concisely. But feature writing offers more opportunity for creativity. They assigned me off-the-wall sports to write about, alternative sports I knew nothing about. My first article was on Motocross. That won first place in the Sports Feature Writ­ing category in the Press Club Awards.
• The next year, he won again, this time for "Deep Sea Fang and Claw," an arti­cle about spear fishermen who scuba dive below the oil rigs. I was going to go out with them. You can free dive where you hold your breath with a weight. But the BP spill just happened, and they wouldn’t let us out there.
• He made it three first places in a row in 2012 with "Submit or Summit: Moun­tain Climbing's Higher Elevations."
• He was nominated the next three years and took third place for "Surfing at Home and Abroad" earlier this year.

But don't worry, English Department. You remain his top priority. I'm here to stand up for the teachers in my department and support them in any way I can.