Teaching

Teaching is the thread that runs through everything I've done since 2001. I'm most directly useful when I'm helping another engineer understand a system well enough that they can keep it running without me.

2025 – present  ·  applied ai solutions engineering

I came through Justice Through Code's Flagship program myself (April 2024 – May 2025). In 2025 I began teaching Applied AI Solutions Engineering content on the same track for Fair Chance Futures (the 501(c)(3) that spun out of JTC). My course notes and weekly modules live at class.wize73.com — weekly modules across the AISE program covering practical AI/ML fundamentals, reinforcement learning, agentic systems, and edge deployment.

The subject changed. The discipline didn't. Teaching AI engineering well has the same shape as teaching a coach mechanic well: start from the failure modes, show the tools, let the learner find the system's actual behavior rather than memorize an idealized one.

2014 – 2023  ·  e-learning development and management

From 2014 forward I moved into project management and technical development, but the trainer background came with me. I managed the e-learning program end-to-end for four major transit agencies: NJ TRANSIT, MARTA, MTA, and GO Transit. Course design, platform deployment, rollout to field staff, ongoing content management. The MTA deployment alone runs approximately 50,000 certification sessions per year.

Managing a training program that serves the people responsible for moving trains is not a soft problem. The cost of certification that doesn't hold up in the field is the same as the cost of any other field failure in rail: measured in people. The e-learning program had to teach the right thing, measurably, at a scale no classroom could reach.

2001 – 2013  ·  union tech, on-site trainer

At Bombardier Technology Solutions I was a mechanical and electrical technician and technical trainer — union tech work. The teaching was constant and hands-on: when a locomotive or coach wouldn't run, I was often the person in the engine room with someone more junior, working through the failure together. It's where I learned the single most important move in technical training — start from the failure mode, not the happy path.

The materials

Course notes, weekly modules, and the live demos that accompany them are published at class.wize73.com. Self-hosted on guapo, same stack as this portfolio, Turnstile-gated LLM endpoints for the weeks that include live inference demos.