Their names are Billy Lucas and Tyler Clementi, and they could have been my students.

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We all froze for a moment on Tuesday, me and the other teachers at the school. The shooting at UT ended up being one person's tragedy, but we didn't know that at the time, and any one of us has dozens of former students at the main campus - especially the ( Read more... )

So my department head asked if I'd be interested in piloting the new math course next year ( Read more... )

I have three picture-postcards ( Read more... )

There's a small cluster of kids who sit in the breezeway that connects the West building (where the floater's office is) to the North building (where most of my B-day classrooms, and, more importantly, the elevator are) every morning. I have accidentally hit them with my little rolling cart a couple of times. I'm detouring around a girl sitting ( Read more... )

Okay, so the workshop I went to today was called "Motivating Students Who Don't Care." That, by the way, is one of the two Big Problems of public education in a district like mine. If we can get the students to care about their own achievement, even somewhat, the vast majority of our full-time problems evaporate and we can worry about other ( Read more... )

"Maybe one last time is all we need ( Read more... )

The number of stuffed animals at school this year was up by about 150%, but the number of big ugly red mylar balloons was down by about a quarter of two years' ago's total (last year V-Day was on a weekend, so it can't really be directly compared ( Read more... )

. . . Well, not really tinctures. Oils. But it alliterated ( Read more... )

So that week was . . . not entirely unlike having to run a marathon while up to one's ankles in blackstrap molasses. Exhausting, frustrating, sticky, and vaguely unpleasant-smelling, but at least it was different.

( The week that was behind the cut )

So, today ( Read more... )