Dr. Moler was born in Ponca City, Oklahoma sometime after the dust bowl days. He and his family moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico when he was very young. When he was two, he grew a small moustache. The formative years were spent exploring the neighborhood surrounding the University of New Mexico campus. Unfortunate circumstances forced his family to move to Oklahoma City just as he was entering seventh grade. Oklahoma City was very different from New Mexico. In high school he transferred to Sewanee Military Academy. He didn’t much care for the marching, but he fell in love with the mountain forests of Tennessee. it was this love that caused him in enroll in the University of the South when he graduated from high school. Four blissful years later he graduated with a BA in English. Post college life was somewhat of a let down, and he spent the next two years traveling. Out of money, and out of his family’s good graces he got his first serious job, teaching resource at Plainview Elementary School in Tracy City, Tennessee. He was not quite prepared for the challenges of this new endeavor, but he did the best he could. He worked with thirty two children that year ranging in ages from seven to fourteen. In the process he discovered he had a way with children. After two more years of teaching on the mountain he moved to Birmingham, Alabama to try his hand at business. He tried the dog food business, the grocery business, and even tried to sell fire alarm systems. He hated them all. So, he went to work in a restaurant, enrolled in graduate school, and two and a half years later graduated with a master’s degree in early childhood education. Suddenly, teaching made sense. Nurtured by the wisdom of giants like Piaget, Dewey, and Kohlberg, he returned to the mountain to teach again. Unfortunately, the good citizens of Grundy County were not so impressed with Mr. Moler’s new teaching methods, especially when he tried to get rid of the new basal readers. After one year of working with second and third grade, he was demoted to kindergarten. Undeterred, he found the relative freedom of teaching kindergarten was exactly what he wanted. All of the hands-on learning that he had come to believe in was perfectly suited to five year olds. After two years he began to long for a change again. He applied to George Peabody College for teachers at Vanderbilt University. They not only accepted him, they offered him a scholarship. Two and a half years later, with course work almost finished, thesis looming, he found himself in need of some additional income. He applied for an interim teaching position at the old Grassland Elementary School. He was hired and the teacher, who was on maternity leave, did not come back. Six years later he was still working at Grassland Elementary, and he finished his dissertation. Then he moved over to the ‘new school’, Walnut Grove.