So it finally happened. That dreaded rite of passage. Three days after Pandemic Thanksgiving, my eight year-old daughter slipped off a chair and broke and dislocated both bones in her forearm. It was pretty stunning, as you might imagine. But...

I got a call recently from a parent of two kids in Fairfield County basically relaying the message that she was “done” with the distance learning for her 3rd and 5th grader. After about 30 minutes of being on a...

When I was a teacher at six different institutions over the course of several decades there was one thing that remained consistent: my dread over parent conferences. Roughly 95% of those conferences were very pleasant and actually provided information about...

The pandemic has created some strange… rituals… for families that I’ve observed that perhaps some of you may have seen as well. Hit me up if you know what I’m talking about here: Culture of the Walk: Why do my...

I had a student recently complain that his teacher was forcing him to learn the periodic table, an exercise in rote memorization that increasingly seems archaic and antiquated in an age when Elon Musk is researching how to connect the...

I’m often asked for reading suggestions as an English teacher, especially for the tweener age group. It’s a good question to ask at that age, given that’s typically when the seed of one’s reading appetite tends to take root. It...

I ran across the below article on CNN and… here here, CNN. Here here. I remember trying to teach my second grade daughter math and thinking I was crushing it. I taught her how to carry the single digits to...

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...