On Offense

There are two kinds of teachers: conservative ones who valiantly sacrifice themselves to maintain our nation’s greatness, and teachers who won’t shut up and do as they’re told. As you may know, I’m the second kind. Both kinds of teachers can have self-esteem issues. In a capitalist consumerist country, no matter how many times people […]

Avoidance

Some of the most painful things that ever happened to me happened in childhood. One day after school, I sat in the car with my mom, facing the tree in our side yard, and crying and crying and telling her I was never going back to school. I had no friends. My only friend, in […]

Failure

If we’re too enlightened to beat up on the minority group of the hour, at least we have our school system to beat up on. I hear the phrase “failing schools” at least once a week, and last night Oprah went on a Godzilla-hits-Tokyo style hike through educational controversies. I watched skeptically, and barked at […]

Last

What protects you, at the end of the school year, is that you are so tired. My first few years, I was frustrated by how dead and hollow I felt. I wanted to feel sad to lose that group of kids, but they were like ghosts to me in the last weeks of school. Or […]