''No ideas but in things.''--William Carlos Williams Stuff comes from stuff. That's a big deal.  Everything you touch came from something else. If we ever truly taught science as knowledge, instead of as a means to magical goals, we'd get this. If we ever taught science as knowledge, we would not need STEM initiatives.We'd need more science ...

When anyone suggests that we not teach evolution in school, he is suggesting that we not teach biology, and in a broader sense, science. So let's be more frank about the discussion--do we teach science, or something else pretending to be science (which reduces science to superstition), or skip the whole thing entirely? (And no, technology ...

I'm letting go this year. I'm going to trust the collection of young humans sitting in my class, brains honed by countless generations before them, each and every child with a lineage going back as far as the first protobionts that globbed together in the seas here billions of years ago. I'm letting go this year. I'm going to remind myself every ...

Morning storm clouds. The light bit at edges, accentuating the few colors that poked through the gray dawn gloom. A brisk wind swirled from the northwest, a breeze out of Chocolat. A cherry tree dumped its blossoms like a snow squall, surrounding me with impossible pink light. The heavy rain drops followed seconds later, soaking the pink petals ...

This one's for me. No need to read it, nothing to see. Move along, move along.... Everywhere plants Flourish among graves, Sinking their roots In all the dynasties Of the dead. Seamus Heaney, from ''A Herbal'' I believe, truly believe, that if you pay attention, real attention, to anything, you cannot help but be smitten by Seamus Heaney, ...

Yes, I know, same old same old...I write for Leslie. When I walk, I walk with Leslie. When I eat, I eat with Leslie. When I sleep, I sleep with Leslie. When I share melomel, I share it with Leslie. This morning I watched a couple of bees trying to suck nectar from pink cosmos flowers. The breeze was topping 25 mph. I suspect the bees were ...

I saw Willa Spicer, the Deputy Commissioner of the N. J. Department of Education, at an AP conference Tuesday. She made the opening remarks, with platitudes on the courage of teachers. It doesn't take a whole lot of courage to not be laid off, so I was a bit confused (a common state for me), but the coffee was good, the company even better, so ...

I once knew an educated lady, banded by Phi Beta Kappa, who told me that she had never heard or seen the geese that twice a year proclaim the revolving seasons to her well-insulated roof. Is education possibly a process of trading awareness for things of lesser worth? Aldo Leopold, 1949 Sand County AlmanacI caught a few fluke today. I picked a ...

What do you teach a young adolescent? How much of the truth do you dare bare? We are in the midst of the Sixth Great Extinction. Technology got us here, and I have my doubts it will get us out. I have faith in life--creatures live in the deepest depths of the oceans, in scalding hot springs, deep within the Earth's crusts will survive ...

What did you imagine lies in wait anyway at the end of a world whose sub-substance is glaim, gleet, birdlime, slime, mucus, muck? from Why regret? Galway Kinnell Yesterday we took over 160 high school students to Sandy Hook to see horseshoe crabs. A few had never seen the ocean before. A few dared let a fiddler crab tickle their palms. A few ...