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 ...

I am embaressed to admit it, but I like Shakira - and not in the way that most men usually think about Shakira.  No, it's not the rock hard abs and belly dancing that impresses me.  Instead, I actually like her music. (For the record, I also like chick flicks, but I am not metro)  My wife left the cd playing in the car and I skipped ...

Solitude is missing from current educational system.  Students, while they are at school, must plough through book work, handouts and lectures in a ridiculous pace.  Everything is disjointed and disconnected, often taught in subjects that are irrelevant to their lives.  Last year, after weeks of drought, it finally rained - and not ...

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 ...

For the last two hours, I have been converting my format for lesson plans (which include the standard, the essential question, the objectives, a few inclusion pieces and a very structured outline) into the school-mandated, heavy-handed SIOP format.  I'm not against teacher accountability, but it seems that true accountability should mean ...

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 ...