Throughout most of my life, I’ve had a reputation, real or imagined, accurate or inaccurate, for being impractical. And I have made some decisions that would have been made better if I’d taken more details into account. Recently, I’ve noticed that people have begun to ask me for practical advice, and I’ve been surprised to…
If you’re a teacher, there’s probably another teacher next door or down the hall, doing what you’re doing, but not the way you’re doing it. Ideally, you get some time to trade successful ideas with this teacher, and warn each other about possible problems. Ideally, you respect each other and see each other as comrades…
In 1965, a representative from Beloit College (in Wisconsin) came to Walt Whitman High School (in Huntington, Long Island) to convince us that Beloit was the place for us. He talked about the great academic environment at Beloit. I wasn’t impressed. He talked about the terms we’d be able to spend off-campus doing all kinds…
There’s an Arabic proverb which says, “Have faith in Allah, but tie your camel.” Children (and adults) want us to trust them, and are occasionally offended when our words or behaviors suggest that we don’t. As I see it, trust is a concept that is more complicated than it’s sometimes seen to be. You’ve got…
It is useful to figure out why children sometimes have difficulty learning, and since most learning problems are somewhat similar to problems that have shown up before in other children, people who think about these things are apt to use labels. Labels are simply words; they don’t tell the whole story, but used wisely, they…
Many children, after a full day at school, come home to one parent. For some, there’s another parent who lives there, too, but maybe that parent won’t be home until much later. For others, the other parent lives somewhere else, but is still involved. And for still others, there is no other parent. Of course,…
I went to sleep one night determined that when I woke up, I’d write an article about family planning. I didn’t sleep well that night. I woke up at 1:00 deciding that the concept of family planning required several articles. I woke up again about 2:30 remembering a talk I’d had with a friend who…
Each week, I spend an hour in a small room with seven children whose first language was Khmer, and their teacher, whose first language was also Khmer. She teaches them to read and write Khmer. At first, I didn’t think I’d have much of a role to play in this class. I know two Khmer…
As a young child, I brought home a poem I’d written for my mother for Valentine’s Day. She was so moved by it. I didn’t tell her that whoever had written my spelling book had also written that poem. I told her I’d made it up. I wanted her to know just how special she…
I realize that there’s only a certain amount that can be taught and learned in school, but I think there have been important gaps in our education due to the simple fact that the people who plan curriculum and implement it are usually educators. Not everyone who goes to school plans to be an educator,…