(THIS IS A SECOND ITERATION OF A POST FIRST PUBLISHED IN DECEMBER OF 2022—NOW DELETED. THE CIRCUMSTANCES THAT INSPIRED ME MORE THAN A YEAR AGO HAVE ONLY BECOME MORE PRESENT AND URGENT—PG) As each new year unfolds, the level of anxiety around the educational enterprise in the […]
Read more →Archive for the NotYourFathersSchool Category
People may think of classroom teachers as just line workers, busy bees looking after bunches of kids under the supervision and control of principals and heads in front offices who exist at least in part to run interference between tax- and tuition-paying families and the workers assigned […]
Read more →A couple of times a year when passing through New Mexico, I am accosted by Zoltar, who would like to help me. I have yet to consult him, however, as I am generally en route elsewhere. But I appreciate his interest. If you ever watched the 1988 […]
Read more →The educational news from Florida these days is almost too dispiriting to read. I am making every effort to keep the state’s very name from becoming code for its headline-grabbing leadership and the continuous executive attack there on principles of diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and social justice […]
Read more →NOTE FROM PG: I began this post as a Comment on a wonderful post by Kirsten Lindberg of The Hewitt School (NY) on the National Association of Independent Schools Independent Ideas blog today. As happens sometimes, the thoughts just kept flowing, and what I had was far […]
Read more →We have all had colleagues who have died, suddenly and unexpectedly. It’s a terrible thing, and a tragedy not just for family and immediate friends and coworkers but for an institution and its community. To be sure, “suddenly and unexpectedly” is not meant to imply a qualitative […]
Read more →When I was a kid, back when we did air-raid drills in the hallways of my elementary school and listened to regular tests of the big yellow Civil Defense sirens mounted on utility poles here and there in my world, we had no illusions about what war […]
Read more →I think of myself as a cockeyed optimist, but that word has been getting some heat lately. Yeah, it’s only a mindset. HOPE is where we must energize our active selves to make the better things we want actually come to pass. That’s nice, and of course […]
Read more →It’s the least wonderful time of the year, with phones jingle-belling and everyone yelling. Grades are coming out, and there is widespread misery and consternation. As kids await decisions from colleges reporting record applications and independent schools reportedly doing pretty darn well, application-wise, every grade short of […]
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