For the last two days, I’ve been at Changing the Odds, a conference co-sponsored by Harlem Children’s Zone and PolicyLink. If I had talked to you about this last week, I’d have been a bit whiny, talking about how I didn’t really feel into it, how I was only going to go for part of [...]
Archive for the ‘teaching’ Category
A Slight Return
Posted in NaBloPoMo, memoir, music, nostalgia, people I love, teaching, things I love, where we're from, tagged everything old is new again, I remember, memoir, music, NaBloPoMo, nostalgia, people I love, teaching, things I love, where we're from on 17 August 2009 | 7 Comments »
This Monday’s memoir honors the 40th anniversary of Woodstock and takes me back to the music unit I did the first year I taught high school. Students chose some of their favorite songs, shared the lyrics and wrote a series of essays: a couple of compare and contrasts, one persuasive about their favorite genre and [...]
Time Flies
Posted in NaBloPoMo, choose your own adventure, goals, teaching, work, tagged choose your own adventure, goals, NaBloPoMo, returning to school, teaching, work on 1 August 2009 | 3 Comments »
… not that I haven’t been having fun, but how can it be August 1st? Wasn’t it just New Year’s? Wasn’t it about six days ago that I skipped work to go to the inauguration?
One thing the quick flipping of calendar days means is that my birthday will be here much sooner than I’m ready [...]
My Gratitude Attitude
Posted in choose your own adventure, containing myself, letting go, teaching, tagged choose your own adventure, containing myself, letting go, teaching on 27 May 2009 | 14 Comments »
And so we come to the dangerous time, the inevitable, end-of-the-year time when students start getting ideas … How did I not see this coming? While it’s true that I haven’t had to worry about it much these last few years, December – with it’s outpouring of chocolates and earrings – should have tipped me off. Yet somehow it didn’t [...]
Love and Fishes
Posted in poetry, teaching, things I love, tagged poetry, tanka, teaching, things I love on 21 May 2009 | 6 Comments »
We were a small class last night: Yenny, Muy Chen, Miao, Dariusz and Wilson. Jason came, but disappeared at break — a too-often problem with him.
We’ve been working on Octavio Paz’s “My Life with the Wave.”¹ I’ve always loved this story. I first read it forever ago when I was teaching high school, discovered it [...]
