On the weekends, my mother hand-washed our clothes at the river. Bending over and slapping the clothes into the water, she would occasionally look up to see us flap around. We children teased the slippery current with our bodies, playing with other children as their mothers sliced the water with heavy clothes as well. At …
I have to interrupt a standardized test in order to give a standardized test. I am in the second week of giving a standardized test that isn’t a test, because nobody gives a wank about this test. The only reason we’re giving this test is because the district paid millions for it. We bought it, so …
Yesterday I headed to Costco for apples, the oversized and spotless Granny Smiths that they sell so cheap, leaving from the Chatham campus and driving along Shady Avenue through Squirrel Hill to Homestead, and I passed this grand commotion (story, too-good-to-be-true, above), complete with TV newsvans, at Poale Zedeck synagogue, and I even rubbernecked, but I …
I have a student teacher this year. Her name is Chloe. I also have to give a standardized test this week. So I’m stuck. Do I give the test honestly? Or do I do what I really do? As one administrator put it, “This test has no educational value. Do as you will, as long …
Perhaps the most memorable character from the First World War is “The Red Baron.” Manfred Von Richthofen died about 11 AM on Sunday, the 21st of April in 1918. There is almost nothing about his death that is not disputed, the exact time, the manner of death, even who shot him. But there is one …
Ray Kurzweil is an innovator and futurist. He developed a number of widely used innovations, notably the Kurzweil Reader, which uses pattern recognition to translate printed material into machine-readable text and the text into speech. In 1976! According to Wikipedia, the Kurzweil Reader project developed both the first flat-bed scanner and text-to-speech generation. Kurzweil’s interested …
I have the hands of a writer—a callous on my right ring finger, arthritis in that wrist from holding a pen for decades. If I could, I’d be buried pen in hand, or perhaps my ashes should be scattered upon the white page. Musicians, singers need to take great care of their hands and voices. …
The kids are reading Romeo and Juliet. So my student teacher is fishing for the answer “dramatic irony”. She asks, “What do you call this, when Juliet is speaking on the balcony, and she doesn’t know Romeo is down below listening?’ To which Marshay responds, “Stalking.” And then yesterday as I’m walking out of the building with …