Biography - Jim
Name: Jim
Nationality: American
Role: Primary coach
Hi! My name is Jim, and I am often referred to as Mr. P by members of the team, or JIM when they really want to get my attention. I am a teacher at Pinkerton Academy in Derry, NH, USA and have been teaching computer programming here for over 20 years. Prior to that, I taught at a White Mountain Regional High in the northern part of New Hampshire, at New Iberia Senior High in Louisiana, and at the International School of Torino in Italy. Also of import is the fact that my wife of 37 years and I have been blessed with three great kids and three adorable grandchildren over the years.
The formation of our team this cycle came about as a result of a discussion I had with Kishore, our team leader, while we were riding high at ThinkQuest Live 2006. We had such a wonderful experience working together with last year’s AI team that we decided to do it one more time before Kishore was too old to participate as a student member. Once we convinced Tina to come on board as the other coach, Kishore got to work interviewing candidates to handle the technical side of things, I got to work interviewing researchers and writers, and Tina went to work finding someone to take on translating the site into Greek, something that we believe no other ThinkQuest team has done before. What we ended up with was the most talented team I have coached to date.
Kishore is an exceptional leader, impeccably well organized, and has insights that reflect attributes you find in a natural born leader.
David and Ruohan did a marvelous job with the web design and its implementation making everything easy to find, easy to get to, and easy to read. Our three techkies Kishore, David, and Ruohan worked so closely and seamlessly together throughout this process, you often thought of them as one.
Harry handled all the translations. It was a monumental task right from the beginning as he surmounted obstacles such as overcoming the lack of a Greek dictionary and a Greek keyboard, to translating over 70 documents in the span of a month
Chrissy and Taylor worked tirelessly researching and writing up the 70 odd documents that make up the site. The girls worked closely with Tina and myself to meld their articles together so they had similar styles and little or no overlapping.
Tina was always there with her uplifting words, cute asides, and insightful ideas on how to get the most out of our site and all of its key players. She scrutinized articles that the girls submitted looking for issues with citations, copyright and form. Being fluent in Greek, she also took on the task of advising Harry on his translations as she reviewed them, pointing out how to make his translations more accurate and complete.
My role was to help complete the paperwork, help Kishore and Tina with planning and organizing, review what the girls wrote before it was translated, lend an attentive ear and help, guide, encourage and excite wherever I could.
When I look back, I have never been more proud of a group of students. They chose and then tackled a very difficult topic to research and write about and they did a truly commendable job in the process. I have seen much growth in every individual on this team. It’s especially humbling to be part of that growing process when you are working with kids as talented as these are to begin with. I hope I meet them someday, and tell them face to face just what an honor it has been working with them these past few months. I wish them all well, and I thank ThinkQuest for providing the opportunity for this type of collaboration to take place.