Monthly Archives: October 2011

One of the benefits of blogging for more than a year is that my post about Halloween from last year is still relevant. That post describes what it’s like on Club Boulevard in Durham, NC, where people who live on … Continue reading →

Today’s Doonesbury cartoon (pictured below) deals with Wall Street executives and their high levels of compensation: I don’t follow the financial world as closely as perhaps I should, so this is the first time I’ve heard of Joe Price and … Continue reading →

When I first started teaching high school in 1995, I showed my students an episode from The Simpsons. It’s titled Bart Gets An F, and if you are curious about more details, you can click that link or rent the … Continue reading →

In a few days, Cary Academy’s middle school is putting on a production of Antigone, the Greek play written by Sophocles about 2400 years ago. For readers unfamiliar with the play, one of the crucial questions it presents is how/whether … Continue reading →

In today’s Zits cartoon, Jeremy is stumped by his assignment: This is a funny cartoon (I love Zits)… but it also makes some important points about typical middle and high school assignments… let’s unpack two elements of this cartoon. First, … Continue reading →

The photo below, from today’s New York Times, drew me to read the accompanying article. I mean… it’s not every day you see a little Lego fireman with a fire hose standing on top of a giant Lego dinosaur… I … Continue reading →

This summer, I met two remarkable 2011 graduates of Elon College, Jesse and Natalie (pictured below). At Elon, they were part of an honors program called Periclean Scholars. As undergraduates, they studied Sri Lanka for several years. As seniors, their … Continue reading →

What an antiquated notion — going to school to learn. Though I have spent most of my professional life as a teacher, “school” is seeming odder and odder to me. That’s why, in August of 2013, I’m opening not a … Continue reading →

My concept for a school learning community (opening in August 2013) aims to create empathetic global citizens.  Let me unpack each of those terms: [The next time I write, I will further explore the distinction between “school” and a “learning community.” The … Continue reading →