As you might guess, I am not employed solely to write a blog. That means that I don’t necessarily have all the time in the world to follow each development, large and small, in the great big world of education. Still, I try to keep my eye on things, write about what I know, and…
Education Reform
When I Grow Up
If everything had gone according to plan, today I’d be a firefighting fisherman with a large and amazing pickup truck for a primary vehicle and a Formula 1 car for getting things done on the weekend. Also, I’d have a helicopter pilot’s license and live in Australia. But the best-laid plans of our childhood are…
Throwback Thursday
It’s Thursday. In social media circles, a major trend is to devote Thursdays to revisiting past ideas, classic photos, and more. It’s called Throwback Thursday and is often accompanied by the hashtag #tbt. In the spirit of #tbt, here are five of my favorite blog posts from 2013 that you should revisit or read for…
Write? Right.
Writing. It’s what I do (besides pining for the 1970s, referencing esoteric pop culture moments, and occasionally stirring the pots of debate surrounding cursive writing or corporal punishment in schools). It’s something I believe everyone should be able to do easily, though I know it is so hard for so many people. And it’s what…
Happy Hand-written Halloween
It may be Halloween, but it’s time to no longer be scared of cursive. I know I have visited this topic several times before, and I know that some states have removed cursive handwriting requirements from their curricula altogether. But I come here to praise cursive handwriting, not to bury it. According to a recent…
Brush with a Paddle
The closest I ever came to the paddle was during third and fourth grade, when I attended elementary school in Florida. To be honest, I didn’t come very close, but I was asked on several occasions to bring a classmate to the vice principal. Not once was my classmate innocent. Not once did they fail…
Answer the Teacher Prep Critics
I took a nontraditional route to teaching. I’m sure you’re not surprised. After a decade as a cubicle dweller, two untimely layoffs within a year were enough to make me finally take the step I had been contemplating for a long time. With little advance preparation, I took the Massachusetts teaching licensure exam, which, when…
For the Love of Dictionaries
As I write this blog post, it is Dictionary Day (October 16). Now, as a writer, I love both words and dictionaries, as well as the magical ways in which words can be sequenced to convey meaning, tone, and point of view. I could have just said syntax, but that word doesn’t pack the weight…
A Thought on the PTA
I recently read an opinion piece in a major newspaper in which the author states she is “fed up” with the endless fundraising a modern PTA organization must undertake. The author, an editor in New York City, notes that the PTA at her children’s school (which she had been an active member of) raised $185,000…
Bedrock, Biomes, Creepers, and Teachers?
My youngest son is in second grade. There are a lot of things we could talk about, but the subject most often on his mind is the game Minecraft—what he’s building, what he has explored, and how he’s gone about doing it. His older brothers are into Minecraft as well and have been at it…