Why Walking Away from the Classroom and Starting a YouTube channel was the Best Decision I’ve Ever Made.

35 year old me would never expected the joy I've found since leaving the classroom and becoming a content creator.

Many of us reach a point in life where we feel the system we once believed in no longer reflects who we are. Maybe you’ve felt it too — that quiet pull to do something meaningful, to teach, create, or explore in a way that no longer fits neatly inside the walls of your career.

At 61 I stopped looking for a full-time teaching job, started creating content on YouTube, teaching through my content, and it has been a life changer.

A Turning Point: Leaving the Classroom, Finding the Road

The turning point in my journey wasn’t retirement; it was recognition. Finding a full-time position in the humanities has become increasingly difficult, especially at this moment in our nation’s history and, frankly, in my early 60s agism plays a factor. But the challenge wasn’t only about opportunity; it was about conviction.

After years of teaching, I began to lose faith not in myself or my students, but in the system that was supposed to serve them. What I once saw as education had hardened into what I now call the Educational Industrial Complex, an assembly line that emphasizes testing over thinking, compliance over curiosity, and data over dialogue. Even in environments that claim critical thinking is the goal, assessment is placed over subject knowledge. The very subjects that help students become thoughtful citizens, Social Studies, the Humanities, and Civic Education, have been starved of support at every level.

For me, the final straw was the faculty meeting where the administration lectured us on assessing the data of the assessment data from the assessment of an assessment. (There may have been another layer of assessment in there I can’t recall). The layers of "educational jargon" that grew between my subject interest and the student just became too much.

I watched classrooms grow quieter as budgets shrank and the arts disappeared from schedules. I saw passionate teachers burn out, and young people struggle to find meaning in an educational model that measures everything except wonder. For someone who has spent his life trying to connect history to humanity, it became impossible to ignore.

Stepping away was not surrender; it was an act of preservation, a way to keep my love for teaching alive by changing where and how it happened. If the classroom walls had grown too narrow, I would take the classroom to the world. Journeys Through History was born out of that decision, a way to keep teaching without asking permission, to keep inspiring curiosity in the public square when the institutional one had lost its way.

But, there is more to it than just changes in the administrative landscape. There is also that hard to pin down and impossible to prove sense that ageism was playing a role in not finding a new job. In past few months I’ve had positive responses on applications, and face to face meetings that had the feel of a sure thing. But then nothing; no offer, follow-up, in some cases no formal rejection. And in at least one instance a clever question made me think there were surreptitiously asking how long I thought I might be teaching before retirement. Almost as if once the white beard and receding hairline appeared their interest waned.

And so it has become apparent, apparently, that I needed to take things into my own hands.

I have always believed that history isn’t a collection of dates and monuments, it’s a living conversation between people and places, between what once was and what still matters. My life’s journey has been shaped by that conviction: as a teacher, actor, historian, traveler, and now as the creator of Journeys Through History. The project grew out of a lifetime of curiosity, a desire to understand not just what happened, but why it still speaks to us. It is a culmination of everything I’ve done: decades in the classroom, years on stage, countless miles walked through museums, historic spots, and backstreets. Journeys Through History began as an act of curiosity and became an act of gratitude.

Roots in Storytelling and Teaching

My earliest memories of history were stories, not textbooks. I was that kid who wanted to know what was behind the old building in town, who once lived there, what happened in that field. Those questions never stopped. That led me into the humanities, first as a student and then as a teacher.

For more than three decades, I stood in front of classrooms trying to make history come alive. I taught middle schoolers, college students, and adults, always searching for the same spark: that moment when a learner sees themselves in a story from long ago. To me, teaching was never about memorization; it was performance, empathy, and discovery. My theater background taught me that history and drama share the same heartbeat, they both ask us to imagine ourselves in someone else’s place.

That idea became the foundation of my teaching philosophy: history as lived experience. Every lesson I taught, whether about Shakespeare, the Gilded Age, the Civil Rights Movement, or the Renaissance, was an invitation to step into another time and ask, What would I have seen? What was happening beneath the surface? Whose story is not being told?

The Intersection of the Humanities and the Human Story

Over time, I realized that what drew me to history wasn’t just the events, but all the ways people have expressed what it means to be alive in their own era. The humanities connect emotion to evidence, beauty to truth. They teach us to see patterns in chaos, meaning in ruins, and value in what others overlook.

In the classroom, I used novels, paintings, and films as entry points into history, showing how culture reflects and shapes our collective memory. In my research, I explored how places themselves, from Revolutionary battlefields to Gilded Age mansions, hold stories about who we are as a people.

I came to see that history isn’t something we leave behind; it’s the landscape we inhabit. Every statue, every street name, every building tells a story, sometimes a proud one, sometimes a painful one, but always a story worth listening to.

The Spark Behind Journeys Through History

The idea for Journeys Through History came from a simple realization: most people want to understand the places they visit, but don’t know how to look beyond the surface. Travelers see monuments, but not the debates that built them. They walk through historic neighborhoods without realizing they’re walking through living chapters of a larger story.

I wanted to change that.

My vision is to create a bridge between the humanities and heritage travel, to help people not only visit historic places, but experience them as windows into the human condition. Journeys Through History is built on that bridge. It’s a digital classroom, a travel companion, and a storyteller’s stage.

Through essays, videos, and talks, I explore how art, architecture, memory, and morality intersect in the landscapes we love, from the Gilded Age architecture of Florida to the fields of New England, the shores of Lake Michigan, and the peaks of the Rocky Mountains. The YouTube channel brings these stories to life visually; the Substack essays deepen them; the live lectures invite communities to rediscover the history that’s right outside their doors.

Each piece of content is guided by the same philosophy: that history isn’t something to consume  it’s something to walk through, question, and feel.

The Actor’s Lens: Performance, Place, and Presence

Being an actor taught me that storytelling is an act of empathy. On stage, you inhabit another person’s choices, hopes, and flaws, and, for a moment, you see the world through their eyes. That same act of empathy is what history demands.

When I visit a battlefield or a historic home, I’m not just observing, I’m listening. I imagine the voices that once echoed there. I ask what it meant to live in that place, in that time. Performance and public history share a rhythm: both depend on presence, timing, and human connection.

So much of Journeys Through History is about reclaiming that sense of presence, slowing down, standing still, and letting a place tell its story. We live in an age of constant motion, yet true understanding comes from stillness. When we pause long enough to notice the craftsmanship of a building, the inscription on a forgotten monument, or the way the light falls on a field once fought over, that’s when history becomes real.

From the Classroom to the Camera

Transitioning from the classroom to the camera was both exhilarating and humbling. Teaching had given me structure; filmmaking required experimentation. I had to learn the grammar of visual storytelling, how to let an image speak where words once did.

But the heart of the work remained the same: clarity, empathy, curiosity. Every video, whether it’s about Hitchcock’s Psycho or the Gilded Age mansions of Florida, begins with a question. Why does this story matter? What does it reveal about us now?

The process reminded me that storytelling, whether in a classroom, on stage, or online, is ultimately about connection. A good story doesn’t just inform; it awakens. It invites people to care. That’s what Journeys Through History aims to do: awaken curiosity, inspire travel, and nurture understanding.

The Florida Chapter: Finding Hidden Histories in Plain Sight

Florida became my laboratory for this work. To many, it’s a land of beaches and theme parks, but to me, it’s an open-air museum of American history. Here, the threads of the Spanish Empire, the Civil War, the Gilded Age, and the Space Age all cross paths.

I started walking the streets of Ybor City, visiting Fort De Soto, Egmont Key, and the Henry B. Plant Museum, places where local history and national identity intersect. What I found was a story of resilience, migration, and reinvention, themes that mirror my own life.

Florida taught me that history isn’t locked in textbooks. It’s underfoot. It’s in the architecture, the names, the silences. That realization became the mantra of Journeys Through History: “Discover the stories hidden in plain sight.”

The Deeper Purpose: Connection, Curiosity, and Meaning

At its core, Journeys Through History is about connection between past and present, place and person, learning and living. It’s also about curiosity, the kind that keeps us exploring, questioning, and growing.

In a time when so much public discourse is divided, history can remind us of our shared humanity. It invites us to listen before we judge, to understand before we condemn. I want my work to spark that kind of reflection, to remind viewers that empathy is a historical skill, not just a moral one.

When I stand before an audience in a library or museum, or when someone comments on a video from halfway across the world, I’m reminded that curiosity is universal. We all want to understand where we come from and how the stories of others intersect with our own.

Becoming a Grandfather: A New Sense of Legacy

Becoming a grandfather added another dimension to my journey. Suddenly, history wasn’t just something I taught or explored, it was something I would leave behind. My granddaughters made me think about the world they’ll inherit what stories they’ll hear, what monuments they’ll visit, what lessons they’ll draw from history.

Journeys Through History became, in part, a legacy project, a way of preserving not just historical knowledge, but a way of seeing. I want them to grow up knowing that curiosity is an act of courage, that empathy is a form of wisdom, and that the past is not distant, it’s the foundation beneath their feet.

Through this project, I’m leaving them (and anyone who follows) a roadmap for how to keep learning long after the classroom lights go out.

Why It Matters Now

We live in an age of speed and distraction, where headlines replace context and history is too often reduced to argument. Journeys Through History is my small rebellion against that. It’s a call to slow down, to listen, to learn from the textures of time.

Travel can be more than escape; it can be education. History can be more than information; it can be transformation. I believe that when people understand the stories behind the places they visit, they travel differently. They move through the world with more gratitude, more empathy, and more wonder.

That’s the heart of Journeys Through History: helping people see the extraordinary in the ordinary, the timeless in the everyday.

The Journey Ahead

As I continue this journey, writing, filming, lecturing, and connecting with audiences around the world, I see Journeys Through History not just as a brand, but as a community. It’s for lifelong learners, retirees, educators, travelers, and dreamers who believe that curiosity doesn’t end at retirement, and wonder doesn’t belong only to the young.

It’s also for anyone standing at a crossroads, wondering what’s next. Because that’s where I began. And as I often remind myself, quoting the West Wing: “What’s next?” That’s the question that keeps history alive and keeps all of us moving forward.

Closing Reflection

I created Journeys Through History because I believe the past isn’t gone, it’s speaking to us, if we’re willing to listen. Every journey, whether across a continent or across a lifetime, begins with curiosity. My own journey has taken me from the classroom to YouTube, from the stage to the open road, from teaching history to living it.

And if there’s one lesson I’ve learned along the way, it’s this: The truest journeys aren’t just about where you go, they’re about how deeply you see.

That’s the heart of Journeys Through History, an invitation to slow down and see the world, and yourself, more clearly through the stories that built it.