There’s something about a pet that meets a human need. A dog can be the kind of friend we sometimes wish people could be. It’s probably good that people don’t give us the same kind of unthinking loyalty we can get from a dog, but nevertheless, there are times when some of us wish they…
There’s a saying that the acorn never falls far from the tree. It’s a statement about people’s tendency to resemble their parents. But sometimes the acorn does fall far. Sometimes an apple seems to fall from an oak tree, or an acorn and an apple. Sometimes a tree can be a veritable horn of plenty….
Mathematics is a language and way of thinking that intimidates many people. Whether you’re in second grade trying to figure out how to deal with the subtraction of two-digit numbers, or in high school or college trying to figure out what calculus is all about, it can be hard because it doesn’t seem to have…
When a child tells a teacher, “You’re the best teacher in the world,” or says, “You’re the best teacher I’ve ever had,” that appreciation, though appreciated, is usually quickly transformed in the teacher’s mind. The child hasn’t known very many teachers, has had even fewer, and it’s very possible that the child will soon meet…
Since I can remember, most elementary schools have predictably taught reading, writing, spelling, handwriting, mathematics, science, social studies, music, art, physical education, and library skills. The last four were labelled “specials,” which usually meant that the regular classroom teacher was not in charge of teaching them; there were other teachers for them, and the classroom…
There’s such excitement when a child first utters a word. It’s the beginning of a new level of communication. We start to know so much more about the person than we could ever learn through grunts, cries, and all those other pre-verbal sounds. The moment is written down in a baby book, maybe, or at…
The decision whether or not to have a student council is difficult for me. I’ll examine some of the pros and cons, but so far I’ve never felt comfortable with the decision to have a student council or the decision not to. I’ll write this article as a dialogue between two teachers in the teachers’…
A friend of mine, who does workshops for teachers and other human services workers around this country, likes to tell about a woman who decided to see a career counselor. As the two were discussing her various career options, she told the counselor, “What I really want to do is be a veterinarian, but that…
I don’t think curiosity killed the cat. I don’t know which particular cat the old adage refers to, but I am confident that it was not killed by curiosity. Perhaps it died because of its unintelligent approach to finding out what it wanted to know. Perhaps, in its attempt to learn, it was unlucky, and…
Several years after I learned to talk, I learned that I was doing it wrong. In junior high and high school, I took courses in English, and in most of these classes, my teachers taught me rules of grammar. These rules said that the way me and my friends (my friends and I) talked was…