For the last several days I have been riveted by an unabridged audio recording of "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation", which won the National Book Award for Young Readers last year. A year or two ago, I read another novel by the author, MT Anderson, "Feed". Although I admired that dystopian story in an abstract, ( Read more... )

About a month ago, we celebrated "principal day" at our school. This was the brainchild of the the middle school community service class, which pointed out that there was a teacher-day and a parent-day, but no principal day. They decided to take care of the omission, and organized several events ( Read more... )

I survived. Despite moments this week where it seemed Friday was aeons away, I made it. My first year is over!

(Well, I still need to clean my classroom. Not a trivial task. But no more kidlings until August!)

Two teachers have resigned in the last ten days. I am so drained and exhausted at the end of each day -- and the weeks run from one into another without a pause. Weekends? What are they? We as a staff desperately need a chance to regroup, take a step back, and figure out how to make this work. Unfortunately, the pace won't let up until the ( Read more... )

I was just thinking about how much I love editing -- taking other people's words and fixing them. It sounds so arrogant, but it's such a nice feeling to take a piece of so-so prose and brush it up so that it's full of life. Or take a muddled explanation of something and ask the right questions of the author to draw out a stronger and clearer ( Read more... )

On Thursday, the staff met for the first time to begin laying the nitty-gritty, day-to-day, operational groundwork for our school. It will be the first year of the charter, and it appears that contrary to what I had half-understood and certainly hoped, we are going to be starting from scratch. None of the resources and curriculum from the old ( Read more... )

I loved the movie "Stand and Deliver", about the maverick math teacher in Los Angeles who created a hugely successful AP Calculus program at his high school. I remember seeing the movie in the theaters with my dad and aunt (my family NEVER went to the theaters normally) and the huge excitement I felt walking out of the movie theater. And of ( Read more... )

Acceptable technical terms that a physician might be tempted to use for boogers include the following: myxolith (slimy stone) and rhinolith (nose stone.)

Sigh. I have obviously been hanging around 4th graders too much if topics like this come up in conversation.

During dinner, hanque and I got to talking about when the first story about space aliens was written. We were thinking some time in the 19th century, but we were quite far off ( Read more... )

I'm in the thick of job hunting at the moment, and just taught a demo lesson at a very nice school in the South Bay. The interview and lesson went okay, but no sparks flew and I'm not too hopeful ( Read more... )