I got some immediate and helpful feedback about my previous article, “Doing It Their Way.” A friend suggested that I write an article examining strategies for keeping integrity and living and teaching in a way that doesn’t seriously conflict with your strongly held convictions. That’s a tall order, but since I think I’ve already written…
One afternoon, driving home from my job as a high school teacher, I was listening to my car radio. Frank Sinatra was singing “My Way,” Paul Anka’s version of a French song about a life lived by the person living it, unencumbered by the rules other people had made. Right away, a parody, “Their Way,”…
There really is a lot of beauty in this world we live in. There are occasional rainbows, the flowers that bloom in the spring, autumn flora (which don’t seem to get as much publicity, and perhaps, as a group, aren’t as dazzling), people’s smiles, random acts of kindness, dragonfies’ wings…Some of the dreariest pessimists I’ve…
Imagine going into a store to buy something you really want. You buy it, bring it home, and when you open the box, you discover that they forgot to enclose the owner’s manual. You return to the store, as a good consumer should, but instead of being handed the owner’s manual by an embarrassed clerk,…
Like the rest of us, children say things that shed light. They see things in new ways, and, lo and behold, they uncover bits of truth. Though I think this is true of everyone, when you hear profound words coming from your own child, you may think you are the parent of a reincarnated sage….
It occurred to me, after I wrote my previous article, that I’d missed an important reason for teachers to spend too much time talking. I’d focussed on the reason I’d done it as a veteran teacher – enjoyment of the sound of my own voice. That’s a common reason, and it deserves consideration. Children often…
Throughout my teaching career, I had strengths and weaknesses. In this article, I’ll focus on one of my weaknesses. I liked the sound of my own voice, and since I was the one who decided who had permission to talk, I talked a lot. Some of what I said was quite worthwhile – a lot…
There’s no telling where you’ll get ideas from. Someone says something, and you get an idea that seems totally unrelated to what was said. You see something, it shakes something loose in your mind, and profound thoughts come pouring out. Or you’re sitting, looking out the window at the snow, and suddenly you solve a…
We’re so lucky to be adults. We get to decide whether to travel, move to a new home, splurge. It was worth the eighteen (?) year wait. But sometimes we abuse the privilege, the way high school seniors lord it over the underclasses: “We’ve been here longer, so we get to make the rules. And…
I don’t like the term “spoiled child,” and I don’t use it. The term implies that the child has a life that is too easy – maybe there’s “too much” attention, material wealth, companionship, whatever other people don’t have enough of. I’ve known and I know many children, and I can easily apply many descriptive…