I wrote an essay about the rising standards of the American high school. People got big mad and proved my point for me. — Earlier this month, I published a piece that I titled Boomers Could Never Survive High School Today. The title was deliberately provocative. Provocation is almost a necessity if you want people to pay attention on the internet, but more importantly, I’m genuinely furious about this topic.

In a job that is full of proud moments, sometimes the one that means the most is the one you never saw coming — I left teaching suddenly. Six weeks after the school year started, I quit over a payroll dispute that the school refused to acknowledge or repair. I loved my job, I loved those kids, and I was heartbroken that this was how it was going to end. I got my advanced…

As much as you don’t want to admit it, a phone is not a “reward” that you’ve bequeathed your child with — My oldest son is sixteen. He’s had a phone since he was twelve, with gradually increasing levels of freedom on the phone. When my son’s grades began to slip, we looked at how he was spending his time and a lot of it was on his phone. After a discussion…

Teens today are held to an absurdly high standard in comparison — In the early days of the pandemic, I was doing school-at-home with my oldest child, who was in 9th grade at the time. He was doing algebra and it wasn’t going well; math isn’t his favorite subject. “At least this is the last math class he’ll ever have to take,”…

When asked, “what’s one thing you wish you’d done differently?”, I’ve got an answer most kids don’t expect. — I started playing the saxophone in third grade. I eventually added other instruments to my arsenal, including private lessons on both saxophone and piano by the time I was in high school. My high school band program was a large, elite program that sent dozens of kids every year into…

Books published in the last 10 years have some advantages over so-called classics. — I’m biased, as a writer working right now, but I think you should read books that came out in the last ten years or so. Maybe twenty, if you’re feeling rebellious. The classics are fine, and I’ve got nothing against them, and I think you can get a lot out…

Your high school literature teacher was right all along — You might have been required to read them in high school or college, or maybe you got away with faking it. But you should re-read classics as an adult, if you have the opportunity, and here are eight reasons why: People have always been people. I will never forget reading…

I asked former students what they wished high school teachers had done differently, now that they had the benefit of hindsight — For context on all of these comments, these students mostly attended a very diverse public charter school in southwest Phoenix. The school qualified as a Title I school, but just barely, and received B+ or A- ratings during all the times at which these students were attending. …

In a very real sense, through this list of actions, they are being entrusted with the future of their communities. — In Melinda Gates’s book, The Moment of Lift, she writes about her work in pulling women out of poverty in developing nations. One of the efforts of that work is to develop more efficient seeds for farmers and other agricultural workers. Seeds that pack more of a nutritional punch, seeds…

It’s a heavy responsibility, and not one I took lightly. Not one that any teacher takes lightly, I don’t think. — Early in my teaching career, a friend asked me two questions: Is teaching really a hard job? Why do teachers complain about low pay, when they knew it was going to be low before they ever even started college? Is Teaching Hard? The first question was asked with a laugh…

At every step in our education system, we are expecting women to shoulder the burden of unpaid labor and thankless, invisible work — Teachers Women make up 76% of teachers in the United States. This number increases the lower you go in grade levels; 89% of K-6 teachers are women. There are some social conventions driving the reason for most male teachers to be at the high school level, but I’m sure we…

As we roll into a new school year, here are some tips for checking in with your kids at the end of their day. — Your kid gets in the car after their school day, their mask dangling from their ear, their hair much more rumpled than the last time you saw them. You’ve got at least eleven more minutes before you actually get out of the seemingly endless drive line, so you figure you’ve…

Only a few students are self-motivated enough to stay on track all by themselves. Teachers can help the rest. — There are few things more frustrating to a teacher than the kids who just seem to give up. They’re bright and they’re capable, but at some point in the year they just . . . stop trying. Of course, there could be external causes: family strife, personal relationships gone awry…

A nine-year-old changed my view of the most disliked Star Wars character in history — As I was driving in the car with my children one day, my then-seven-year-old asked, “What’s the name of that annoying guy in Star Wars? The one who is tall and stupid?” Without skipping a beat, I answered, “Jar Jar Binks.” Because of course I did. You would have too. …