Paul at quoteflections tagged me on this one, and it has taken me a bit of time to get to it. I created the wordle last week hoping I would get to it – here it is: I use Wordle in my classroom to help make abstractions more concrete. My favorite way to do this…
Category: Refelections
Cold and Apples
I have been saving the last of the Wolf River Apples, carefully stored in the basement refrigerator for the holidays. I made an apple pie at Thanksgiving using them, and the last ten pounds will be for Hanukkah applesauce. Wolf River apples are unusual for two reasons: they are HUGE, the size of a large…
Putting all the pieces together
I work with the United States History and the other American Literature teachers on a project that is wholly valuable, consistently maddening, and frequently time sucking. There are definitely days when it doesn’t feel worth all the work, all the talking and thinking, all the mediating and prodding. And then a student will remind me…
First Snow
Snowball snow. Heavy and wet. I thought as I slipped my way out to the car that Andy, the principal of our neighborhood elementary school, would hate this snow. First snow. Snowball snow. My girls would love this. But I had to drive in it. I picked up my carpool buddy, and we headed to…
Remember
I teach this senior elective on the autobiography and memoir. Right now we are reading a group of writers who always make me think: Lucy Grealy, David Sedaris, Anne Lamott, and Harvey Pekar. A wonderful assignment from last week was to write (after reading Sedaris’s “Twelve Moments in the Life of and Artist” from Me…
Life Long Kindergarten
Yesterday I had a wonderful conversation with my American Literature class about playing with books. I told them that I had spent a day at the MIT media lab two summers ago, and I was impressed by Mitch Resnick and the folks there at the Media Lab because they had this great problem solving model:…
Back to “The Gift” and “fair use”
So, I am not the only one thinking about on-line offerings as gifts. In this week’s New York Times Sunday Magazine there is a feature about Lewis Hyde, MacArthur genius grant recipient, poet, and essayist. He asks the question: What is art for if not to share? In a gift economy, gifts only increase in…
Powerful memories
Paul over at quoteflections posted today about Clementines. He’s got me thinking and remembering. In South Dakota in the 1960s foods were good and the measure of a cook was how well she (usually) could capture summer in the freezer bag, the canning jar, the jam pot, and the pickle pail. Fresh fruits in the…
Thank you notes
My mother and grandmother always had us write those thank yous before the excitement was off the receipt of the gift. The gift came with an obligation, even if it was that pair of slippers from my Great Aunt Alice (who had no idea what Mom had spent the money that she sent on.) As…
Monday Morning Journalism
This week at school there was one consistent conversation in the halls and classrooms on the 4th floor: underage drinking, facebook, and getting called out on it by a peer. Who was the “snitch” who printed out photographs from facebook and gave them to the dean? Why did they do it? What would happen? Could…
Lick and a Promise
That’s what my grandmother always said was that just for show attempt at something you need to or want to do. So here are the things that I want to write about but haven’t had a moment: My advisory and the Billy Collins poem “Another reason why I don’t keep a gun in the house.”…
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
Clay Burell writes a blog that is engaging and literate and that on occasion terrifies me. His recent series of posts raises real questions about the Bush administration and the current election, but also about what we, as teachers, are doing in the face of Rome burning. (Sorry Clay, I will spell your last name…
Living on the Lip of Insanity 