So I almost started a podcast about teaching. No, really. I was in my fourth block last week and while my students worked on a reading assessment, I spent a good half hour filling Post-It notes with the outline, format, and topics for a podcast called Ninth Period, which would be conversations about being a …
Category: Reflections
Personal Archaeology 17: When I Was A Teacher Blogger
On my phone, there's a screencap from an old Innovative Educator post that begins "The unspoken truth about teaching writing in school is that few people doing so are writers themselves."* The first two paragraphs of the post I screencapped. I removed distinguished characteristics of the blog, but you can Google all of this to …
Continue reading Personal Archaeology 17: When I Was A Teacher Blogger
Return of the Writing Pile
A little more than two years ago, I wrote about how, in the twenty years since I graduated college, I have written a lot but actually never considered myself a Writer. Much of that has to do with the lack of formally published works, which I could blame on gatekeeping if I ever actually stepped …
Okay, now. Reset for real this time.
I got my annual planner in the mail yesterday. Yeah, I'm one of those people who still uses a paper day planner, because while I do put appointments into my phone's calendar app, I still find that when I physically write things down and cross/check them off, I feel a sense of organization (or at …
The Art of the Decluttering Video
Screencap of a "Spring Cleaning Videos" playlist I made on YouTube. So back in March, I was pretty psyched about getting some spring cleaning done, so I decided to psych myself by watching some decluttering videos. Good God, that sounds lame. But really, I was bored on my lunch break and clicked an Abundantly Minimal …
Revenge Is a Dish Best Served Tired
"Insomnia" by _Jer_ is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 So I have been reading a lot about how there is a brewing fight between management and labor over physically returning to work when remote work has been not only navigable but successful for many. Although I welcome my returning to a full-time in-person classroom (and laud my school district …
Uncollecting Your Brain
"Ping pong project" by mknowles is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 I went to meditate this morning and Insight Timer wouldn't work. I quickly determined that because I have a 6th generation iPod touch, the app won't work because my iPod doesn't have iOS 13 or newer. So after briefly cursing Apple for their bullshit* and then making a …
Your Personal Energy Crisis
"Book hoarder (28 Jan 13)" by ejbSF is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Maybe it was because I was nine years old that I found Spock telling Kirk "It's always been easier to destroy rather than to create" in Star Trek II deeply profound even though it's an incredibly obvious statement. Then again, maybe I'm just dense because the …
Finding Something That’s Yours
Downtown Sayville at Christmas. Painting by Peter Tartaglia. You can view this and other paintings at his website. I was scrolling Facebook this week and in a group about my hometown, someone posted this gorgeous painting of Main Street. I would have gotten homesick if not for the accompanying post that bemoaned how the older …
Gratitude.
When I was in high school, a couple of my English teachers had a small poster on their classroom walls that, I believe, came from William Safire. One of the rules was "Avoid clichés like the plague." I keep thinking about that while trying to write this entry. It's supposed to be all about what …
The Uncollecting 