People can have many reasons for wanting to teach in public schools. Some of them neatly match the most common reasons for which communities have schools – they want to help children learn how to read, write, compute, and do other things that most people agree are useful in later life. Educators may disagree about…
Once, a bunch of us teachers were having lunch and conversations in the teachers’ room. Some conversations were about teaching, some about the rest of life. As we were eating and talking, the school secretary’s voice came over the loudspeaker: “Hannah, can you take a call?” Hannah, a third grade teacher, gave an answer that…
Most parents work hard to help their children grow up right. There are all kinds of ideas about what “right” means, and parents, therefore, have all kinds of goals as they teach their children how to live. They often see their children as reflections of themselves, and they can be proud of their children or…
I keep hearing talk on the news about some people’s interest in lengthening the school day and school year. It’s being treated as a way to improve education. I guess the implication is that what happens in school is valuable, and if more of it happened per day and per year, things would be even…
I was once in a school cafeteria, having lunch with a small group of second-graders. The place was about as noisy as school cafterias usually are at lunchtime. At our table, we were asking each other riddles. I was politely pretending not to know the answers. We were having fun. Suddenly, the lunch monitor’s voice…
Many of us learn that it’s a sin to tell a lie, and that confession is good for the soul. And so many parents get quite concerned when their children lie, and get quite frustrated trying to elicit confessions. I remember how my own parents used to do it. They lined us up facing them…
For some lucky people, school just plain makes sense. It’s enough like the rest of life to keep surprises at a comfortable minimum so that people can adjust easily. Of course, there are surprises for everyone; it’s impossible for school to be exactly like home, or for parents to prepare their children for absolutely everything…
Rick Last, the fourth grade teacher I’m working with this year, recently had his class read A Hundred Dresses, a book about the way some children deal with a child who is different. It’s a well-written, powerful book, and it has some important things to teach children. I observed quietly as Rick led a discussion…
When two children are about the same age, there can sometimes be a bond between them. That bond can feel like the best of sibling bonds. In fact, it can conflict with real family ties – sometimes quite dramatically. A child may love her/his little sister or brother, and the two may play together pretty…
I don’t know how much of my childhood I remember through having lived it, how much I remember remembering it, how much I remember it through photographs, nor what other kinds of memories I have. All this writing I’m doing certainly brings back memories, and so does my work with children. I think a lot…