The Last Hoorah
This is what I’ve been saying to students and colleagues lately: the last Hoorah. I’m tired. The students are tired. Teachers and students everywhere are tired. Yet, the work is not finished. There are reviews to conduct, exams to administer and assess, reports to write, end-of-year festivities and meetings to attend…it all becomes just too [...]
Time You Won’t Get Back
As I was saying to my Dear Mom via telephone on yesterday afternoon, this is the time of year when I feel a certain sense of loss. A sense of loss for things not accomplished, things I wanted to do, under-utilized/missed opportunities, and simply not enough time, energy and money to do it all, anyway. [...]
Cosmic Zombie
I assigned a webquest on “La Semana Santa” to two of my Spanish classes last week. The day was 11 April, which, incidentally, was my birthday, for which I took a personal day. Although La Semana Santa had already taken place, the webquest was worthy enough to be completed post-holiday. The students, for the most [...]
Do White Folks “Get It”?
This is not a post written with the intent to turn off my White readers. However, I hope they will read. The longer I live and work in majority (White) environments, the more I wonder: Do White folks get it? What is it that they don’t get? In my workplace, they don’t get issues around [...]
A Fresh Start
Perhaps strange, given that I’m entering the last third of the school year. Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to a fresh start. Just as with the students, each trimester gives me as a teacher an opportunity for fresher thinking, spurred on by new ideas and different ways of doing things. Perhaps it’s the anticipation of warmer [...]
Writing End-of-Trimester Reports: A Survival Toolkit
This is a post I would have written long ago. But, I had an epiphany shortly before writing the last batch of trimester reports. So, here is my list. My kindred spirits in independent schools will relate in a very personal way. 1. Get a good night’s sleep. 2. Get an early start, between 8 [...]
Waiting to Exhale Before I Choke
For the next two weeks, I am on March Vacation. Like most independent schools, my place of employ follows a traditional prep school calendar. Thus the reason my place of employ breaks in March for two weeks. Independent boarding schools take three weeks off, essentially closing things down for the month of March. I’ll admit: [...]
Got Apathy?
I was part of the most recent Foreign Language Chat, which takes place on Twitter every Thursday from 8-9 pm, EST. The topics are generally useful, and the conversation, for the most part, informative. However, and, as usual, the usual suspects dominated the conversation. Therefore, it was difficult for lesser-knowns like me – LOL – [...]
Having Our Hands on the Right Things
The following is a reply I posted on the now-defunct MFL blog. Due to a lot of flap, the blog has since been taken down. Thus, I am glad I preserved my comments. I don’t think that Mr. Picardo espouses a die-hard tech-only point-of-view. We tweet from time to time. I am also an occasional [...]
Weekly Wrap Up #2
Before the clock strikes midnight, and before I fall asleep on the living room sofa, I figured I had better write my post. This time last week, I was in the early stages of what was diagnosed two days later by my primary care physician as a muscle spasm. Its greatest impact was to the [...]
