(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 […]
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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 […]
Read more →I have been poking around among in-school school counselors, whose lives these days are consumed by supporting colleagues and students in acute personal distress, much of it related to the uncertainties, constraints, and ongoing sorrows of the pandemic. I’ve been interested in their overall relationship to academic […]
Read more →Much of the optimistic messaging I have seen since the pandemic began has been about the promise of project-based learning, which has kind of laid exclusive claim to the moniker “PBL”. But some of us have been talking for a while about two other kinds of PBL, […]
Read more →Cognitive dissonance has become a way of life for us in the past ten pandemic months, soon to be a year of 525,600 minutes and very likely at least that many deaths. But lately I’ve been on the edge of cranial detonation, watching the COVID-19 numbers rise […]
Read more →In my life I am connected to a whole lot of independent schools. Through family and friendships, not to mention professional connections, I am hearing a whole lot about life in schools during this unbelievably stressful time in our educational history. Teachers aren’t very happy, administrators aren’t […]
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THIS IS A GUEST POST BY A YOUNG INDEPENDENT SCHOOL TEACHER (currently in search of a position after his previous school downsized due to COVID, BTW). I’m delighted to share Will’s perspective here. Conversations about the start of the school year have been dominated by the question […]
Read more →A history teacher encounters a dismissive and demeaning reference to gay and lesbian people in a student essay. A Spanish teacher senses that students are obliquely mocking stereotypes of Latinx persons during conversational practice exercises. An English student continually asserts in class discussions of a Toni Morrison […]
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