A Teacher's Writes

I have been working on this lately, rewriting it to express better what I believe about education. I may tweak it more, but this is where I stand today. It is the duty of the educator to prepare students to live lives of quality and purpose¹. Intellectually, a life of quality involves being reasonable, adept, … Continue reading »

Recently the governor of South Dakota, Dennis Daugaard, publicized a plan he is proposing for reforming pieces of the education system. Some of the details are available at the Argus Leader’s website, but the three big basics go like this: $5,000 bonuses each year to the top 20 percent of teachers in each district. $3,500 … Continue reading »

We had barely removed our third child from the hospital’s bakery warmer before someone first asked us the question: “Are you done?” It became the stock question, following on the heels of “What’s his name?” and “How old is he?” We naturally developed a stock answer: if we did have another child, we’d probably adopt. … Continue reading »

On a Friday afternoon few things can cure the sunken feeling of a long week like time with my family can. Tonight we made popcorn and cauliflower for dinner, eating the cauliflower at the kitchen counter and then reconvening in the living room for popcorn and the original version of The Parent Trap. Our three … Continue reading »

For a couple years now I have slowly inputted a kind of writing workshop in my classroom. It wasn’t a full-fledged workshop, mostly because I had other non-workshop things I had to accomplish, but I liked to give students the ability to choose what writing assignment they were going to work on during a given … Continue reading »