Tag: teaching
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Sometimes Losing is Winning
[Friends Seminary. [Photo credit: Google Search.] I spent New Years Eve, 1990 alone in a bar in Binghamton.The only kiss I got was from the off-duty bartender who had started celebrating early. He kissed the top of my head and said: “I love you, man,” and then fell backwards onto a table. I was at…
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The Old Schoolmaster
You throw a pebble, a small boulder that you can barely pick up, or a grain of sand into a pool of water. If there is no wind, you can watch the ripples move out in perfect concentric circles, ever-widening. The tiny waves keep going until they reach an obstacle and they bounce off into…
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The Social History of a Man’s Tie Rack
Many of you, my faithful readers and fans, probably assume that I just write a blog and then go off and mow the lawn, fish, read, paint, take Pilates, go to a movie, make a big bowl of popcorn, cook a stack of buttermilk flapjacks, attend a men’s support group, catalogue my moth collection,…
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Pushing Chalk: Recollections on a Classroom Life
Hey, teacher leave them kids alone. -Pink Floyd “Another Brick in the Wall” 1979 “What is a rock?” I actually asked this question of my Earth & Space Science class of ninth graders. It was probably my third year of teaching. I was in a public school near Wilkes-Barre, PA. There were thirty kids in…