594. Norks and Noogly

I rarely liked gym class as a child or adolescent. I remember dodge ball games, where I was supposed to try not to get hit with the ball. If (when) I did get hit, I usually got knocked over. I remember the trampoline, where I was supposed to rely on my sense of balance and…

The term “quality time” started getting popular in the 1970s. I think it was used as an attempt to make people feel better about not spending much time with their children. Somehow, the “quality” of the time parents spent with their children was going to compensate for the lack of quantity. It didn’t take long…

As an elementary school teacher, I have always worked against sex role stereotyping. I grew up male, and for much of my life, most of my friends had grown up female. We all felt as if we’d been encouraged – sometimes forced – to fit stereotypes that didn’t feel right to us. I wanted to…

No matter what your job is, it’s probably not the only thing you think about when you do it. Depending on the job, the other things you think about affect your performance to varying degrees. If your life is in order, and everything is going well (but not so well that you can’t think about…

I’ve already written an article about effort, but I realized, yesterday, that there’s a little more to the issue. A teacher asked me about a child with whom I’d been working. She said, “Do you think he’s trying?” My answer was, “That’s a complicated question. I think he’s trying to try, but I’m not sure…

As a child, I always enjoyed being read to, and as a teacher, I always enjoyed reading to children. In one of the classes in which I volunteer, Jerry Friedman, the father of one of the children, comes in every Friday to read a chapter or two of The Hobbit to the class. He reads…