Ten Back-to-School Promises to This Year’s Students

Ten Back-to-School Promises to This Year’s Students

Are you ready for back-to-school season? All summer I’ve been anxious to know what I’ll be teaching this year, but that curiosity has finally gone away. What I teach doesn’t matter–it’s what students do with it that does. Here’s what I...
Never Waste a Good Sick Day Being Sick

Never Waste a Good Sick Day Being Sick

Fall is here. It’s beautiful in New England–the trees are starting to look like they grew out of a Norman Rockwell painting.  We used to watch this guy on Public Television back in the days when there were only three channels.  He’d paint...
Things Mr. Brown Said

Things Mr. Brown Said

Mr. Brown was about twenty feet tall. He had to be. He was the wrestling coach. Those were the days when a teacher could lift a kid up, turn him upside down, and shake the excuses out of him and not have anyone bat an eye–the days of the Breakfast Club and...

How I Get Out of Traffic Tickets and You Don’t

I was first generation that never sat at a counter at Woolworth’s. I never burned a bra. I didn’t need a bra but that’s beside the point. I wore mine dutifully with the other flat-chested girls who wouldn’t burn bras because we’d been liberated by our mothers. Girls...