Sitting in a staff meeting, I pull out the agenda and begin drawing cartoons.  Instead of reading PowerPoint presentations, we work collaboratively (read ''group think'') on a school wide mission statement.  ''Make sure it is attainable, measurable and . . .'' I am jarred by the word ''measurable'' as the speakers words trail off in the ...

As I approach the driveway, Joel stands there with a hose, spraying the grass.  I expect him to drop everything and run to his daddy.  Instead, he waves and smiles, then returns to his duty of running up the water bill and increase the Phoenix drought.  Christy and I laugh as we watch him jump in mud puddles.  In the midst of ...

I flip through the newspaper and notice an article about a meeting between the CEOs and founders of huge technology firms and governors of various states.  The goal was for these corporate leaders to instruct the politicians about how schools need to change.  At first, this seems like an arrogant move.  After all, I would not tell ...

After reading a recent blog, suggesting that teachers should self-censor and stay politically inactive, I feel compelled to write this blog.  Telling teachers to shut up and focus on their classrooms is like telling Martin Luther King Jr to shut up and preach or Schindler to shut up and run a factory.  The truth is that, if we want to ...

After taking so many theory classes this summer, I am left with a mental overload.  I enjoy the dialogue and debates, yet I can't help but feel that none of the ''isms'' really worked for me.  Constructivism was great, but often unrealistic.  Behaviorism seemed to treat kids like robots.  I loved parts of the critical pedagogy, ...

When I ask students at summer school what topic they want, I present three choices.  The class overwhelmingly chooses ''financial planning,'' which, for me, is a fun unit to teach.  When I ask a student why he chose financial planning over the Holocaust, he explains bluntly, ''I already knew about the Holocaust.  We do it every ...

Students are swept up into the whirlwind of the AIMS test - a grueling twelve hour marathon where they will be transformed from students into data on pretty graphs in Excel sheets.  We're not in Kansas in more. (Honestly, we never were.  We live in Phoenix, home of the traffic cone, the brown cloud and a sea of mundane tract housing) ...

It is a show which lives up to its name, embodying nearly every form of America's idolatry.  Yet, we scoop it up by the handful - the thirst for fame, the worship of celebrity, the cult of stardom, the sex, the lights, the music, the commercialism and the Coca-Cola.  We listen to the sage advice of the three great high priest, one of ...

Growing up, the show was controversial.  Parents hated it.  Groups boycotted it.  Kids reveled in it, because it was real.  Unlike the plastic, pollyana Cosby show or the TGIF line-up, The Simpsons spoke to a generation of youth who loved the satire on childhood.  Nowadays, its shock value pales in comparison to ...

I first read Catch 22 as a cynical high school student.  Something about the wry humor, the absurdity of the system and the feeling that I was surrounded by insanity resonated well with Mountain Ridge High.  I enjoyed the lively characters, though I never felt any real emotional connection to them.  So, I'm reading it now ten ...