One of the great things about being a retired volunteer is that I don’t have to go to staff meetings unless I want to. Now in my third year as a retired volunteer (as of this writing), I still haven’t wanted to. I like spending time with the teachers; we have great discussions in the…
Imagine doing something you have just learned to do, and are already beginning to enjoy. But then imagine that as soon as you finish doing it, you’re going to have to do something you are still trying to learn to do – something you can’t yet even imagine enjoying. And that’s what it means to…
One word I sometimes enjoy playing with is “professor.” I haven’t bothered to find out how the word came to mean what it usually means, but I enjoy thinking of a professor as one who professes. That is, it’s someone who professes to know and teach, but may or may not actually know and teach….
When I was in junior high school, a friend whose thinking I trusted heard me during one of the many marathon talking sessions I had back then (I’ve cut back somewhat since then), and said to me, “Bob, you don’t have to talk.” I was taken aback by his comment. While the statement was literally…
In our culture, it’s customary to acknowledge people when you happen to get eye contact with them. If you don’t know them, you say “Hi,” and maybe talk about the weather a little. S. I. Hayakawa (whom I admired as a student of language, though I didn’t like his politics) called this “the language of…
My article about grumpiness begins to tell a tale that will probably come out in bits and pieces. Nowadays, when I feel like complaining about something, I try to spend time and energy thinking about whether complaining would be an appropriate thing to do, and if so, how to do it. I don’t rule out…
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…
I’m a daydreamer, and always have been. Sometimes, I pay attention better than other times, but there have always been times when I’ve drifted off into my own Walter Mitty world and missed important things that were said by people who weren’t in that world. For example, when I told my mother I had no…
I got some immediate feedback about my article entitled “Misbehavin’.” My friends reminded me about another way of thinking about misbehavior: children misbehave to get attention. I have no doubt that many – maybe most – do, but I’ve often been frustrated by that explanation. If they misbehave to get attention, then the obvious thing…
There are children who do things they aren’t supposed to do, and smile as they do. Some adults, seeing this happen, conclude that such children want to get caught, want to get punished, and/or don’t care. Such conclusions make it easier to make sense out of what’s going on: the children are bad, and should…