This blog is a response to Donald Trump’s position statement for second amendment rights. The Second Amendment to the US Constitution is clear: the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed upon. The US is the only country in the world to have a constitutional amendment meant to protect… read more
In the end of his book, Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher’s Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling, John Taylor Gatto outlines his plan for a very simple project that could have a powerful impact on the future of public schooling. He suggests that everyone involved with schooling, from teachers to students to… read more
I recently listened to an Invisibilia podcast called “Becoming the Batman,” in which the hosts discuss the concept that blindness is a social construction. They talk to the author of the book The Making of Blind Men, Robert Scott, who explains it simply: “The disability of blindness is a learned social role.” He goes on… read more
In his book Nature and the Human Soul, Bill Plotkin outlines the eight stage ecocentric cycle of human development. He also calls this the soulcentric cycle, using “soul” to describe the innate purpose or calling in your life, or “the truth at the center of the image you were born with” to borrow from the… read more
I wrote the following letter for a student to be placed in her time capsule to open her senior year. The assignment asks students to get a letter from an important adult in their lives, and to have the adult seal it so the students don’t know what it’s about until they open it in… read more
As I write this, several of my students are completing the AP Literature and Language Exam. Recently I assisted one of my students with answering questions over a poem from a released practice test. Now, I am a teacher who loves poetry. One of my favorite explanations of the power of poetry is from a… read more
In the outstanding book Teaching Truly: A Curriculum to Indigenize Mainstream Education, Four Arrows (Don Trent Jacobs) and his fellow authors provide a revelatory opportunity for us teachers to get to the heart of what is important in education. Being indigenous, Four Arrows explains in an interview with Derrick Jensen, “relates to a nature-based reality… read more
While people all over the country at all levels of education and policy attempt to diagnose the ailments and causes of the decline of American education, I can do it in one simple word: distraction. There are so many things competing for our students’ attention these days. When I was in high school, we had… read more
It’s time to go back to school! As Dr. Gabor Mate explains, “Educators should be in the emotional attachment business before they are in the academics business.” Before you can even think about teaching your students, you have to give them a reason to appreciate your class. In other words, students won’t care about what you teach until you… read more
