About Martin
Mr. Martin, a.k.a. Jeff, is a native of Northern Virginia. Growing up just outside the beltway, I developed both a healthy interest in, and intuitive distrust of politics and politicians. In 1998-99, I lived throughout the former Yugoslavia (Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia) in Eastern Europe, learning fluent Serbo-Croatian, teaching English classes, eating various greasy foods, and avoiding NATO bombs. Upon returning home, I was intensely curious to learn as much as possible about Balkan politics, and focused my studies on international relations, specifically on the violent dissolution of the former Yugoslavia, ethnicity and ethnic conflict, as well as democratization in the post-Communist world. Between 2000 and 2006 I earned a B.A. and M.A. in Political Science. My graduate thesis was titled “The EU and Democratization in Serbia”. During this time, I married my beautiful wife Lisa, and since we had two beautiful daughters.
I’ve had (some might consider) a strange variety of jobs before becoming a social studies teacher, including a pizza delivery specialist, interviewing people who just got arrested for a federal drug study, the director of an urban farmers’ market, a real estate agent selling urban loft condos, and a graduate teaching assistant. In my last year of grad school I started a clothing company, which I operated for about 2 years. After selling my company, I worked briefly as a semi-professional silk-screener and briefly designed again.
In the summer of 2008 I joined the Baltimore City Teaching Residency, which is an alternative certification program that enables non-education majors such as myself. Currently, I am very happy to be in my second year of teaching Modern World History at Baltimore’s prestigious all-girls Western High School. In the 2009-2010 school year, I started teaching AP Human Geography, which has been as challenging as it has been rewarding.