A verbal river rock, worn smooth from use. 

Today I have something to share with you. Where some people collect rocks, I collect and categorize the clichés specific to my job in education. I am not referring to clichés instructors use in the classroom – students already do a good enough job identifying these. I am referring to those that are heard amongst teachers/education professors/administrators. 

Please gather round as we examine my collection (put together over the past semester with the help of a few friends in the biz). Some of them we will pass around and appreciate for their timeworn beauty. Others, due to their crimes against original thought and/or their implied ideas, will be skipped blithely across the water to sink into obscurity.

These rulings are final and not subject to appeal, thanks. 

Continue reading My Cliché Collection

I’ve been listening to different renditions of “My Favorite Things” —  the Coltrane version, the Julie Andrews version, a version I’m playing with science teacher Mr. Looney on mandolin, a version my wife recorded a few years ago. Given the lyrics, I started thinking of some soul-affirming places and objects at work I might reference in my own rendition of the song.

Continue reading These are a few of my favorite things (at Woodgrove)

Glows

This is some of the stuff that went well — skip if you’re here to revel in my failures.

Journals: I compiled journal entries into a booklet that I kept in the classroom. Students took them more seriously than any prior journal system I had used, knowing that they had been prepared carefully and would be read with scrutiny. Q2 journals will refine skills from Q1. 

Continue reading Glows and grows from the first quarter

Four years ago I wrote about how a teacher doesn’t really know anything about their classes until they have had fifteen sessions with them. I’m still waiting for the peer-review process to certify my Theory into a Law. 

While I wait, though, I have a few more Eccentric Theories to share. 

Continue reading Three (and a half) more eccentric theories about teaching

Last year I taught in four different classrooms. You may remember my meditations. 

This year, I have been blessed with my own space. Given that I took the time to  complain reflect about not having a classroom last year, it’s only fair that I take a moment this year to acknowledge the delights of having one of my own. 

Continue reading The Boundless Joy of Having My Own Classroom

Moments from this semester that made me happy to be a teacher and/or forced me to draw a very purposeful breath…

Continue reading Zen Moments, Spring 2023

I want to write more about my fellow teachers, especially the ones I consider masters of their craft. There’s no better person to start with than my English colleague Lea Longerbeam, who is retiring next week after 33 years in the profession. 

Continue reading A Wonderful Time

I have fond memories of most of my teachers, but weirdly the most influential teacher in my life is someone I haven’t spoken to since I left her classroom, and I have had no interest in ever contacting since. 

Continue reading Always Be Closing, Y’all

At the midpoint of the school year I gave my honors students an anonymous survey. The first question was whether phones have made school better or worse for them. Because most of these students attended a middle school that had a pretty strict no-phone policy, they are able to reflect on the difference. So has the tech liberty of high school made the school experience better for an honors student? I was genuinely curious what they would say. On the one hand, teenagers love their phones. On the other hand, they can be very perceptive and critical of themselves. Before looking at the results, try to guess what you think the breakdown of responses will be.  

Continue reading Phoning it in

There’s no problem finding me between classes. No matter where you are in Woodgrove, you can track me down instantly thanks to the din caused by the four utility wheels screwed to the bottom of my oversized wooden lectern. Where other transient teachers push their LCPS-issued “carts” silently and inconspicuously down the hallway with something resembling dignity, my rig groans with an embarrassing attention-demanding roar every foot of the journey. And the show isn’t just limited to sounds! Occasionally in the jostle my mouse will slide off the pad and burst apart in the crowded hallway. Turning a corner too fast and my guitar will swing like a pendulum and bop the corner. One afternoon the file holder I’d installed on the side spontaneously broke from its fastenings. But the noise is definitely the lectern’s calling card: at least once a week a student will politely suggest that I bring in some WD-40 to alleviate the noise. A few times I’ve had to ask a student to retrieve my lectern from the English workroom. You can hear the roar as they bring it, first faint, then deafening, the once-happy student now wearing an expression of clinch-jawed humiliation. The other day I passed a custodian pushing these giant trash containers on wheels down the hallway, and I realized that both these devices use the same wheels, that my big showy Mr. Scott Education Rig makes the same noise as a mobile trash can…

Continue reading Cart of Darkness