My friend Dan points out that there are over thirteen varieties of the same pretzel. This doesn't even include stadium soft pretzels. Rather, he is referring to the ways that manufactures create pretzels - mini twists, large (thin) twists, fat twists (they look like deyhdrated bagels), thick logs, thin sticks, long sticks, short sticks, pretzel ...

When I was a kid, I went through a phase of designing baseball stadiums. It was at the time that they built the new Comiskey Park and I felt like it was an injustice to the old. When other kids had idealistic dreams of playing first base for the Giants, I had dreams of designing their stadium when they would eventually replace Candlestick Park. ...

Sometimes I feel as if I don't fit into the system of education.  I wonder if I am just crazy or if I am part of a silent minority (perhaps even majority) who feel the same way.  So, I am making a list of paradigm shifts that I think many teachers, administrators and politicians need to make. I hate lists, but I really felt like turning ...

After reading the answers from Bell Work, I feel confident that my students know the causes of World War II.  We engage in a dodge ball type game that enables them to see imperialism and colonialism.  I allow them to break into alliances to teach the alliance system.  We discuss this and then move onto the Treaty of Versailles ...

Twenty students claim their favorite seats within minutes of the lunch bell ringing.  The skeptic in me initially assumes that it is a first week rush, a desire to get out of the one-hundred and ten degree heat. The students will find out that our Student Leadership Meeting is actually pretty difficult and the numbers will diminish.  I ...

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 ...

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 ...

Birthdays are important to me.  Unlike other American holidays, they do not require reciprocity.  There is no give-and-take, no social contract; nothing that says, ''our gifts better be equal, because if they don't, I'll either feel gyped or guilty.''  Unlike the stressful holidays that require months of planning and occassionally ...

I'm breaking the rules of blogging ettique, by creating a long post.  Yet, I don't think I can explain the story in a shorter format.  Maybe it's just not meant for a blog.  It's the first week of school and I have a class of forty-one students for a scripted, fill out the handbook, bureaucrat-imposed ELD class.  My initial ...

On the first day of school, students completed a metaphor of school.  School is a _______ and I am a _________.  Many students chose prison, because, like prison, the school tells them what to wear, when to speak, when to pee, what to eat, what to study and (a few of them argued) what to believe.  It was interesting what others ...