readied for disaster
I’m giving this speech at a ceremony today for some college grads, honor society initiates. I think it’s mostly done, which is good because it starts in an hour. * * * I’m delighted and…
Category: learning
with the band
“I never knew you played piano.”
perfection and mistakes
Later today, the band gets to record in a basement studio in an old historic building, grand staircases and marble floors leading to a retrofitted basement space. We did a mic check—literally to check on…
dumb question
We say there’s no such thing as a “dumb question.” But I know we all know we know better. Maybe. I was with a few hundred students on Friday, chaperoning a field trip for a…
study guides
Brad, a friend and teaching mentor of mine, recently posted about how his online astronomy students’ teaching evaluations complain that they don’t receive study guides to prepare for exams. He wondered out loud (well, on…
the kids are alright
I think that Karyn and I both thought we’d cry a lot more during the graduation ceremony. This is what we’d braced ourselves for, after all, basically just streaming tears through the whole ceremony. I…
taking in air
Early on Tuesday morning I found myself where pavement ends, the roadway cinched up with a horseshoe bend that’s edged by a hundred diagonal parking slots. Coming around that counterclockwise turn and past the trailhead,…
speaking in tongues
There’s an easy flow that washes through me when I’m teaching, something I don’t attain in private conversation. In the everyday, I’m in the corner; I’m a quarter turn behind meshing gears; words are dragged…
school planning and educational promise
I can’t remember any school bond or budget that I’ve not supported. I don’t know if that qualifies me as liberal or an overzealous advocate of education, but in any case it’s an indication of…