Essays 1-20

I’ve been waiting for the right moment to write about coping with children’s exuberance. I wanted to pick a moment when I was feeling exuberant, and could think about how it might be difficult for other people to deal with me. But as most writers know, ecstatic moments don’t make you feel like sitting around…

A teacher named Jill or Jim is headed back to her/his second grade classroom after having gone to the office to take a phone call. He/she has spoken with his/her class about what should happen when no adult is in the room, and most of the children know what’s supposed to happen. Even most of…

You may want to read this article yourself before you let your children see it. You may have been telling your children some things that aren’t true, and you may want to keep the myths going. I’ll try to cloak my references in verbiage. I, myself, have always tried to be honest with children, but…

I’ve often heard teachers say that teachers make the worst parents. The statement, as I’ve heard it, has usually referred to one aspect of parenting – relating to a child’s teachers. Parents often have strong opinions about what should and should not happen in school, and when a parent is also a teacher in a…

There are many times when we’re expected – maybe even required – to have something finished well, proof-read, collated, and mailed or handed in by a certain time. Not having done what’s expected when it’s expected may have unpleasant consequences. Your project, though perhaps better than someone else’s, won’t get the credit you think it…

In a few of my columns, I’ve written about approaches with which I strongly disagree. Some, like spanking or sarcasm, I consider simply wrong. To me, they’re not matters of personal style; they’re things that should not happen in school, at home, or anywhere else. I’ve never spanked a child, but I have used sarcasm….