Teaching matters.We owe it to our children to get it right.  What do you care to know about the world? There's a place for what used to be called boredom, for empty spaces to slide into your mind. It's not particularly unpleasant, but it lacks the dopamine we've programmed our children, ourselves, to crave. If you sit still long enough ...

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. ''The Second Coming,'' ...

An Cailleach Bhearra wandered around back in the 10th century in western Ireland, eating ''seaweed, salmon, and wild garlic'' (my kind of woman), looking for firewood. If the day was bright and sunny, beware--she had gathered plenty of wood and was set for many cold days ahead. If the day was gray, she didn't bother, and she will make the days ...

While immersed in the Krebs cycle in mid-January, pushing biochemical pathways on sophomores who have yet to learn chemistry, I marvel at their persistence, trying to grasp what I know they cannot, but I ask them to do it anyway. (There is something unethical about this....) Should I ever train a dog to bark in Latin, I will be praised for ...

Last week of the sinking sun. The Earth hurtles closer to the sun, but my little piece of paradise edges more and more oblique to the sun, our source of light, of life. We're in the dark season. *** The bell still rings at 7:45 in the morning. It's not a bell anymore, but we still call it that. I blew a conch shell as the bell sounded, an ...

If a child has an insatiable appetite to learn about the world, to pursue patterns and rhythms in the swirl of sensations slipping into her consciousness each day, then it makes sense to teach her the vocabulary of the trade. If a child chases the rational world with her eyes alit, then it makes sense to teach her the finer points of ...

We got smacked last week--I still step over a downed line when walking to school, and the curbs are lined with life-like tree limbs. Just seeing all these leafy zombie branches edging the asphalt gives me an odd joy. I wonder if other biology teachers feel the same way. The storm was a great reminder why trees scurry to drop their leaves in the ...

I wandered into school despite our Hallowe'en snow day, to prep for lab. I brought in some pond water I foolishly (and joyously) collected in the middle of the storm. I took a drop, put it on a slide. I never know what I expect to see, and I'm never disappointed. I saw some critters I had not seen before--first a few translucent ''turtles'' ...

The trees are exploding. We're getting a wet, heavy snowfall, and the broad leaves of our deciduous trees are catching snowflakes as well as they catch photons. Their vessels are still swollen with sap, carrying nutrients back into the ground, stored in the massive roots of the underground world we fear. Water starts to expand as it nears its ...

I used to be a doctor, the kind with a stethoscope, the kind licensed to hurt you for you own good. It puzzles children to learn that a physician would walk away from medicine in order to teach, and there are days I am baffled myself. I liked medicine. I love teaching. I did not know that this would be true when I left medicine, so while it is ...