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 ...

'Turn away no more; Why wilt thou turn away The starry floor, The watery shore, Is given thee till the break of day.' William Blake Today is the last day of the darkest two weeks of the year, the shadows stretched long on the beach like languid lovers unaware of the long darkness just hours away. Leslie and I, shadows of each other, walked ...

I got an email from Education Week this morning that prompted this. Conclusion 1: Across the life span, from infancy to late adulthood, individuals learn about the natural world and develop important skills for science learning. I'm taking my lambs to Sandy Hook in a month to watch horseshoe crabs mate, to hold a few fiddler crabs, to seine the ...

Our crocuses bloomed today. A tiny horseshoe crab, smaller than my thumbnail, crawled out of the Delaware Bay. The day lilies are rising again, like Phoenixes from the snow's ashes. All of this is more real than the nonsense that passes for discourse in the education world. I can still close my classroom door (though I rarely do) and tackle ...

I went fishing yesterday, tossing a bucktail into a channel behind West Wildwood. The sky was steely, a mist was falling, and the bugs enjoyed slurping hemoglobin from my scalp. I didn't catch anything, which was fine with me--I have scallops from Walt the scalloper in the freezer waiting for next Saturday, and we have a chunk of last summer's ...