Joel Glick was born on October 3, 1952 in Los Angeles, California. When he was 1 1/2 years old, his family moved to Lakewood, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, where he lived with his mother, father, two brothers and one sister.
When Mr. Glick was young, his favorite interests were reading and rock music. When he was in junior and senior high school, he played bass guitar in various garage bands, but also enjoyed folk and country music.
His favorite musical artists were:
Mr. Glick meets Donovan at the Aladdin Theater
During his teen years, Mr. Glick worked summers and part-time at his parents snack bar and at a Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour. He also took part in competitive speech and debate tournaments at Lakewood High School, where he graduated in 1970.
Mr. Glick attended Long Beach City College, where he received an Associated Arts degree in 1973. At LBCC, he was active in campus politics and served as student body treasurer. He then attended California State University Long Beach, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1978.
During the years that Mr. Glick
attended college in Long Beach, he held various jobs working in oil refineries,
a movie theater, tutoring students and delivering auto parts. He also traveled
to Mexico and Cuba.
He also worked as a full-time volunteer for the United
Farm Workers Union, led by Cesar
Chavez.
Mr. Glick wrote an essay about his experiences with the UFW, which you can read
on the Farmworker
Movement Documentation Project website.
In 1979, Mr. Glick moved to San Francisco, where he entered the Masters of Arts program in Teaching English as a Second Language at San Francisco State University. After graduating from that program in 1981, he taught English at the Centro Colombo Americano in Bogota, Colombia. Upon returning to the United States, he moved to Hawaii where he taught English at Honolulu Community College. In 1983, Mr. Glick married Emily Polanshek in Hawaii. Their first son, Jeremy Jacobo, was born in Hawaii in 1984. Their second son, Aram Amado, was born in Oakland, California in 1987.
Upon returning to the mainland, Mr. Glick received a teaching credential in California, and began teaching middle and high school English as a Second Language in Oakland and San Francisco. In 1992, Mr. Glick moved with his family to Portland, Oregon. He commuted to Salem for eight years, where he taught middle school ESL in the public schools.
Since 1990, Mr. Glick has been teaching ESL at the secondary and elementary levels in Lake Oswego. He enjoys working with students from all over the world who are learning English. He is the advisor for the International Club at Lake Oswego High School, and is also vice-president of the Lake Oswego Education Association. Mr. Glick served for six years on the Resolutions Committee of the National Education Association. Currently, he serves on the Board of Directors of the Oregon Education Association (OEA). He is also an active member of Oregon Teachers of English as a Second Language (ORTESOL) and Brit Tzedek v'Shalom.
Mr. Glick's wife Emily, teaches Spanish reading at Trost Elementary School in Canby. His son Jeremy graduated Vassar College in New York in 2006, and is now a graduate student at Stanford University. In 2009, his son Amado graduated from Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Amado is now working in Japan as part of the JET Program, teaching English on the small island of Uoshima.
Mr. Glick with his mother Evelyn, son Amado, son Jeremy, wife Emily and father Morris at Jeremy's graduation from Vassar College, May 2006
In his spare time, Mr. Glick likes to read, watch movies, listen to music, follow the news, exercise at Bally's Gym, hike and travel. For three years, he played bass guitar in the LOSD faculty rock and blues band, Big Blind. He enjoys vacationing in Quintana Roo, Mexico where he recently learned to scuba dive and received his open water certification.
During the summer of 2005, Mr. Glick and his wife visited Israel and the West Bank as part of a Global Exchange tour
. If you click here: Prospects for Peace: Israel and Palestine, you might be able to see a PowerPoint show that Mr. Glick created about that tour.During the summer of 2007, Mr. Glick and his wife visited Russia, Cyprus, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan.
Big Blind