Anecdote to set up the big moment: Okay, I’m going to go ahead and date myself here. (I’m bald, so there’s really no hiding my age, anyway, especially in the summer, but I digress.) Let me educate you on the...

Texting has become a routine part of communication to most subcultures in America, but it’s easy to overlook how important it is to teenagers. While to some degree it can seem like an adult “invading the clubhouse” (certainly the case...

According to report put out by the ACT, a college testing agency, the national average in the United States for college freshman retention rate in 65.7%.  That means that roughly one third of college freshman in American colleges will not...

The concept of flow might be the most single important element of style since cavemen picked up the chisel. I generally advise that your reader is like a dim-witted five year-old with a short attention span and little interest in...

I often see a shortcoming in the instruction involved in integrating evidence in analytical essay in high school teaching. There is this notion that you have to have a complete sentence followed by a colon to introduce text. This understanding...

I’ve never had so much time, or so little. Social distancing has eliminated a lot of typical time draws: commuting, dropping kids off at school, running errands, shopping. It would seem a good time for mental accounting, and yet the...

Helpful Tip: While I’ve experimented with Kaplan, College Board, Princeton Review, etc, the guidebook I’ve settled on is the Peterson’s. It has a diagnostic test that divides up questions by type and then provides the content and sample questions that...

That heartbreaking scene: a father or a mother gasping for breath, quarantined in the hospital, cared for by a nurse with a mask strapped on so tightly and for so long that it bruises her and makes her eyes bulge,...

It’s been a strange month. One of my students asked me what my day was like and the length of my answer was surprisingly long. The tedium I feel apparently doesn’t fit reality. “I wake up when my son starts...

HELPFUL TIP: Slow yourself down a bit and make sure you understand what the question is asking you. Is it asking for meters or cubic meters? Is it asking for X or X+Y? Is it asking which sentence to eliminate...