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 ...

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 ...

I ride past a freshly plowed empty field and see a large corrugated fence that advertises the latest neophyte tagging crew in sloppy, choppy letters. I don’t know what is the worst of these aesthetic crimes – the graffiti on the walls or the fact that it is so cheaply done, with such dull black letters that they blend in with the ...

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 ...