[Before we get down to the main topic at hand, I wanted to add another response to the discussion of the impact of the Covid years on kids of different ages. I noticed this note from Sarah Orlowski Huska too late to include in last week’s posting. She brings the unique perspective of a parent of a child the same age as the students she teaches, which gives her a kind of 360-degree view of the...
I promised that I would share some of the responses to my invitation to teachers to share their observations about the lingering effects of the Covid years. I haven’t heard from a lot of teachers which is hardly a surprise during this energy- and time-consuming start up period in the school year. I know I would get a better yield by contacting specific teachers, but I’d rather not impose on...
My friend Kimberly’s passion for kids and teaching always stokes the embers that remain from my years in the classroom. When she visited recently, I asked her how the year ahead looked after the initial week with her second graders. It happened that we had been engaged in a conversation about the challenges of getting kids with special needs the services they deserved, so it wasn’t surprising...
“If it don’t kill you, it’ll make you fatter.” I first heard this phrase from a colleague who attributed it to her Puerto Rican grandmother. I’ve since encountered many variations of it, as I’m sure you have as well, but the meaning doesn’t vary. We all face adversity at some point in our lives. Sometimes the experience causes permanent psychic damage, but if we struggle to overcome it, we emerge...
The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. This is not the beginning of a funeral oration. In this case, the “Lord” I have in mind is also all-powerful, but her name is technology. I’ve been beside myself for the last couple of days because my computer monitor died, and my attempts to replace it kept failing.I’ll tell the story of that failure in a minute, but first I need to explain why the tech...