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 ...

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 ...

After watching the latest Harry Potter movie, I was struck accuracy of what happened at Hogwarts.  In a motive of fear, the school shifted from meaningful learning to standardized curriculum.  A beauracrat from the State Department of Magic began instituting rules in order to reclaim the sense of order that she felt was missing from the ...

I met with a group of young teachers.  They remind me of people who are newly married, in the way they exude a certain idealism and passion.  I love being around new teachers, because that energy is contagious. I know that the daily grind of paper work, grading and meaningless staff development meetings will all take there ...

I sit at my desk with a fat stack of papers.  The solitary electric guitar quietly introduces notes to the song  ''Round Here'' by Counting Crows– a lonely track that never should have been a hit, because it really wasn't all that radio-friendly anyway.  After that, I immediately expect to hear the goofy, hick-like beats ...

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 ...