Michael Ditmore started teaching English at Maybeck in the fall of 2003. Michael has had a long and varied career, and has spent time as a grass-roots political activist, a cannery worker, a day-care worker, a theatrical lighting designer, a contributing member of an agricultural collective, a single parent, and a student of life. Michael received his BA from Berkeley in 1980, studied renaissance literature in the MA program at Berkeley, and advanced to candidacy for the Ph.D. in English literature with an emphasis on modern philosophy in 1992. Throughout his college career Michael was a working scholar, and labored to provide for a family while he accomplished his studies. He has taught in the UC Berkeley Freshman-Sophomore Studies department, and has taught innovative courses in the UC Berkeley English department writing program for which he received the Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor award. Michael has also taught college and high-school courses on modernism, Greek classics, ancient world literatures, the British novel, modern poetry, Irish literature, including single-author courses on Virginia Woolf, W.B. Yeats, and James Joyce as well as general Irish Studies courses. At Maybeck he teaches English and history. He is continuing to pursue his Ph.D. in literature and philosophy during the summers.