=I have an English-Chinese electronic dictionary. It’s as small as a lady’s powder box but contains English vocabulary and expressions as comprehensive as a cumbersome hardbound Oxford dictionary. I thank the inventor of the electronic dictionary for bringing immeasurable convenience to me. In fact, almost every Chinese, Korean and Japanese student that I’ve met on …
There is today much hypothesizing about how to train teachers. In my three decades in the classroom, I have supervised student teachers from a variety of universities. I am certain that the qualities, which enable this career, at least in part are found in erudition, skill and emotional discernment. Regardless of how teacher education is …
Since I’ve been in America for a year, I am no longer considered a newcomer. I am supposed to know the society better, at least deeper, than a year ago. But if you ask me whether I am used to my American life, I’d say I am still adjusting. A year ago, I had no …
8 AM In order to save money, the school district is making bestial layoffs. About one out of every four of the teachers will be fired by sundown. Or so the rumor goes. To deal with our anxieties, several schools of thought have developed. Schools within this school, as it were. On my third …
I’ve been trying to learn to write plays. It’s a craft, I know, not only an art. I’ve heard it said by someone in the theater that writing a play is like plumbing. I understood her to mean that things have to be connected up right or you have a spontaneous overflow of something you …
There was a shoot-out — and I mean like a full gansta shoot-out — up the street at 6:30 AM. Twenty or thirty or more shots fired. It happened in the parking lot of the A.M.E. church. The smell of cordite lingered for half an hour. Sirens, sergeants and paddy-wagons for an hour. Ghetto birds, police helicopters, off and on for two hours. Now, …
On Thursday, October 14th, Willard Tillotson passed away. As the chairman of Hefren-Tillotson and a man deeply involved in the Pittsburgh community his funeral was attended by hundreds of people. I had the pleasure of meeting him, and as brief as it was, we still shared a good laugh. * Ting! I was standing in …
Hugging myself as though kicked in the gut, wanting to turn the lights out and write in the dark because the bulbs are bald and their eerie brightness sears, tears, rips right through me. Even my eyes are aching, crazy eyes in their socked out sockets, my mouth a crater and how many times have …