Email: llong@phoenixunion.org 

 

I was born in Chicago, Illinois, but when I was four months old, my family moved to France, where my parents studied French for almost a year. We then moved to the Niger Territory of French West Africa, where I grew up. That former French colony is now the country of Niger. When I was six years old, I was sent to the British colony of Nigeria, which is now an independent country, to go to school. Until I was 16, I traveled back and forth twice a year, spending the school year at the boarding school, and spending Christmas and summer vacations at home with my parents. 

I returned to the United States to finish high school and then off to college. I attended Moody Bible Institute in Chicago for a year before transferring to the University of Illinois. After two years at U of I, I quit school and began learning from the university of life. Four years later, I returned to college, graduating from Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, with a Bachelor of Science in Biology. I returned to Africa to work at the boarding schools I had attended as a child, then returned to the United States to begin graduate school. In 1980, I graduated cum laude from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois with a Master of Divinity degree. I moved to rural Indiana, where I pastored a church for 14 years. At the end of those 14 years, I also became a police officer. After five years as a police officer, having become fed up with midwestern winters, I moved to Arizona, hoping  never to see snow again.

While in Arizona, I had the opportunity and privilege to begin traveling to former communist countries in eastern Europe to teach, which I continue to do in the summers. In 2001, I began teaching Reading and English at Coolidge High School. Three years later, I transferred to the Phoenix Union High School District. I taught four years at Camelback High School, two of those years as the Department Chair of Reading. When Franklin Police and Fire High School opened, I made the transfer and have been here ever since. 

I am certified in English and Health, with an endorsement in Reading as a Reading Specialist. It is my goal to serve my students to the best of my ability to help prepare them for a productive and successful life beyond high school.