I’m not a fan of funerals and not just for the obvious reason that they represent the fact that someone died. They are, for me anyway, often tension-filled. First, being an atheist, I struggle against the call on religion to soothe our souls in our time of distress. Second, it means dealing with family and…

One chemical spill, a scenic detour and a huge rainstorm later, we’re here. Please consider donating to my efforts in the Susan G. Komen 3-Day Walk for the Cure

Mr. Geeky called last night–as he has every night since he’s been gone–to check in. He asked when I was planning to leave for the funeral. Well, I said, I have a meeting at 3 and students coming at 4, so probably not till 5:30 or 6. Are you crazy? he said. Well, it’s the…

I’m not sure what to make of the response. It was what I expected, that this whole thing is about neatness. I hate, hate, hate the focus on neatness in grade and middle school. I mean, really, what is the point here? Okay, so neater writers do better on the SAT. That is not right.…

I’ve just fired off an email to Geeky Boy’s social studies teacher complaining that 1) they spent two days in class practicing handwriting and 2) they had homework to practice handwriting. I said I was disappointed that she considered this 6th grade level work and asked for an explanation for why she was doing this…

My last grandparent died. My dad’s mother, last night. This deserves more than a bullet, but that will have to wait. She was 92. The last two years of her life were not quality years. I would describe parts of my life right now as being forced to wear a wool sweater when you have…

I love playing with technology–mostly on the software side, but hardware too.  I honestly get a thrill on the level of riding a roller coaster when I discover something new.  For example, a couple of weeks ago, I installed Parallels on my MacBook Pro on the recommendation of an equally geeky colleague (which I wrote…

I’d like to point everyone to the discussion going on in the comments to my recent post on public education. I think my reactions to public education are complicated and probably can’t be summed up in a blog post or a comment. In reality, we have pretty good schools here. They’re not perfect obviously, but…

Update: In catching up with my RSS feeds, I ran into Kathy Sierra’s post about success. I love Kathy Sierra. I think she says in this post exactly what I was trying to say above. That is, there appears to be only one track to “success,” moving up (internally or externally). I think, however, that…

When I think about what it means to be involved in education, I think primarily about curiosity. I think one should continually be curious about the world around you. One should always want to ask, “What’s new?” and then go find out. Coupled with this curiosity is imagination. I think of education as coming up…