Sometime after 9-11, I lost all sense of patriotism.  It might have been the way people used the American flag to sell beer (not unlike Jesus Breathmints and granola bars).  Perhaps it was when I first heard a country singer telling me we should stick a boot in the ass of Afghanistan.  ''It's the American Way.''  And I began to ...

I walked into a language arts teacher's classroom and he vented about the lesson, ''Kids just aren't at all engaged.  It's just not motivating them.'' ''What are you teaching?'' I ask. ''Well, it's folklore and lengend.  We have to do the story of Paul Bunyan.'' ''What's not to love about that?'' I ask.  He eyes me ...

So, it's the end of week one for the summer vacation.  I have all eight weeks planned out and subdivided within a bulleted list.  The bullets have sub-bullets.  After awhile, it begins to resemble a drive-by, with bullets strewn everywhere.  I suppose ''drive-by'' is not a bad metaphor for my approach to summer vacation.  ...

Johnny passes by in his cap and gown as a flood of memories pass.  I recall snippets of hard conversations, small arguments, difficult basketball games and the late nights where I was editing his papers.  I thought of that first moment when he was a fourth grader in a tiny house with no air conditioning and he explained that it ...

For the last two weeks, students in my class have explored multiple facets of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.  They have analyzed sources for bias, posed intelligent questions, created metaphors for the conflict and developed solutions.  I admit that it is idealistic to assume that 8th graders can solve the world's problems in two ...