The other day I was talking to a friend about a piece she was writing. Ray tends to write in a personal style, but is starting to include more academic sources. Considering my own traumatic brush with academia, I’m ambivalent about this. One thing she said bothered me, because of what it represents. She said:…
Tag: education
Where the Sidewalk Ends, Life Begins
Learning To Read I loved books even before I could read. Before I could read, I would demand that my mother read the same book over and over until I’d memorized it. She got so frustrated that she bought me a tape recorder and began recording the books I loved so that I could just…
New Year’s Writing Resolutions: Avoiding Burnout
I managed to convince myself to take a week off from posting to the website, as a means of avoiding burnout. It wasn’t easy, but it was necessary. As much as I want to post every week, every day, even, to keep up consistent site traffic, I recognized that my energy is not unlimited. I…
Banned Books Redux?
New Book Bannings A couple of months ago, during Banned Books Week, I wrote that banning books is really about protecting fragile adults, not children. Since then, it seems like there’s been an explosion of efforts to restrict access to books, especially books about queer topics. My own school district in Florida has dealt with…
Girls*
Girl No. 1 Did you brush your teeth? Did you put cream on? Did you wash your face before you put cream on? I told you to have the pro-bio before having breakfast. Now what about water? Drink water before food. How many times have I told you that having a bottle of water is…
Can’t I Leave you all Alone for a Second?
Let me set the scene: It’s independent reading time in my second grade classroom. Everyone is busy reading a physical or virtual book of their choice. No one needs water, the bathroom, or any of a million other things they usually need me for. If I warn them I’m going, then suddenly they are hyper-aware…
London Letter #5: “Somewhere Beyond the Sea”
Yeah. I’m not in London anymore. I’m not even in England anymore. But I’m still writing these because there are aspects of my trip I look back on, even at the remove of only a few days, with a warm sense of delight and tranquility and joy. And there are parts I am haunted by….
What it Means to Ban a Book
“Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself.” The only book my parents ever took away from me was Catcher in the Rye. There are a lot of reasons someone might want to take that book away from a child. But none of those were the reasons my parents confiscated it from me. My…
Blog-posts Lead to Discussion…
By Adam Katz One of my favorite new activities is writing a blog post and having someone I care about bring it up in conversation. I like doing the reverse, as well, not surprisingly. My recent Big Think, about trying to shed the homophobic bias I was invisibly raised with, led to an amazing conversation…
We Dance to the Pulse of 49 Hearts
The Pulse Massacre 5 Years Later Shielding vs. Teaching In December of 2012, the day after my youngest child turned 3, on what had begun as a typical Friday (with a little extra crankiness because there had been an extended evening of celebrations the night before) the Facebook News Network broke a story about a…