The End of Days
The month of April was a bit unsettled in Connecticut this year. First, we had the earthquake that no one…
Merit Pay, Anyone?
I wasn’t going to weigh in on this because, well, everyone else has, and what am I going to say…
Gina
Rainer Maria Rilke was an Austro-Hungarian writer who was born, wrote, and died a long time ago. He was most…
The End of the World
In the nearly twenty years I’ve been teaching in the US public schools, I’ve had quite a few kids walk…
What They Remember
It’s been the summer of meeting up with former students, students I haven’t seen in more than a decade, a…
Living in America
There are many things I could write about as the dark and confusing year of 2015 draws to its close,…
Forty Days in the Wilderness
And so…as the school year draws to its close and the frenzy of testing slows, (but does not yet completely…
Testing Testing One-Two-Three
On page 58 of the January 26th issue of The New Yorker, there is a cartoon showing a numb-looking teacher…
They Flew Through The Air
One of the things the new Common Core emphasizes is the ability to distinguish between serious and not-so-serious sources of…
No Pain No Gain
I was watching PBS news the other night and saw an interview with Amanda Ripley, the author of the new…
Living in America
There have been days since my father and mother passed away three-and-a-half years and a year ago respectively when the…
Boat People
So, Thanksgiving is once more upon us, the season in which where I work, little lines of boys and girls…
School Days
So the Taliban are now shooting girls who want to go to school, are they? Not that this is really…
First Aid
On September 18th, the US government announced that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), after two decades of…
September 11th
And so another anniversary of the September 11th bombing of the World Trade Center has come and gone replete with…
The Pip Squeak Sikh
Several years ago, on the first day of school, a young child was delivered by their mother to the class…