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…

Read More →

Gooey Gray Mud

  If you had told me that walking knee-deep through the gooey gray mud of a tidal basin during a cold New England April would be one of the highlights of my high school years, I might have laughed. Right in your face, in fact. That’s if I had been paying attention. (I was not…

Read More →

Building Bridges

Team-building exercise. Three words. One hyphen. Plenty of trepidation. I’m not a fan of team building. I should be, but whenever I hear someone at the front of a room I’m in use the words “team-building exercise,” I look for the nearest exit. If you’ve got a few hours, maybe we can trace the origins…

Read More →

I Bought Myself an e-Reader

At the beginning of the summer, I bought myself an eReader. It’s a popular one from an online retail powerhouse. And it’s okay. My reasons for buying it were simple: portability and an end to space- and paper-consuming physical books. This device was going to revolutionize my reading habits (which had suffered the last few…

Read More →