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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

As I approach the driveway, Joel stands there with a hose, spraying the grass.  I expect him to drop everything and run to his daddy.  Instead, he waves and smiles, then returns to his duty of running up the water bill and increase the Phoenix drought.  Christy and I laugh as we watch him jump in mud puddles.  In the midst of ...

I flip through the newspaper and notice an article about a meeting between the CEOs and founders of huge technology firms and governors of various states.  The goal was for these corporate leaders to instruct the politicians about how schools need to change.  At first, this seems like an arrogant move.  After all, I would not tell ...

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 ...