From the archive
I don’t know what I expected. Maybe that I’d be better at handling loss than I am. Maybe to believe the mid-west adage that there’s nothing more curative than WORK WORK WORK to take your mind off things. Whatever the case, I have been struggling. I feel like I’m doing a terrible job at school […]
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what it means to be “Put Together.” (As in, “Let me put myself together,” or, “That’s a guy who really has it all together.“) It’s a feeling that I like and I assume everyone else likes it, too. Otherwise, why would we all have dress shoes? Anywho. When […]
When someone you love is slowly dying, one thing no one really tells you about is just how much goddamned sitting around you have to do. Something like 75% of the whole shebang is time spent just sitting in a chair in a little room with the people you care about waiting for something bad […]
Yesterday was ACT day at my school district and it was just…depressing. It had snowed the night before (in April?!) and there was talk of a snow day, but we really only had about an inch, it wasn’t super icy, and all of it melted by early afternoon. Still, it was chilly and there was […]
I haven’t been reading much. Well, I’m still reading a little, but I’m so preoccupied that in my off time I just veg out and either watch YouTube or TikTok. Still, I’ve gotten through Dungeon Crawler Carl and am currently working through the second book in the series, Carl’s Doomsday Scenario. I’m doing the print […]
My dad is sick and I am a mess. He was diagnosed with esophageal cancer a few weeks ago after a hurried trip to the ER when he started having difficulty swallowing. Scans revealed a tumor in his esophagus that prevented food from going down; more scans revealed that the cancer had spread. The prognosis […]
“There’s no way we’ll have a snow day tomorrow,” I believe were my exact words to students yesterday. We have the day off. I knew there was snow in the forecast, but it looked like a small amount and our district is notoriously stingy with “snow days” to begin with, so I figured there was […]
Over the last few years, I’ve gone to great lengths to rid myself of vices. I’ve given up smoking, alcohol, soda, and coffee. I’ve started trying to eat healthier, to drink more water, and to exercise more. If I’m being honest, it’s been horrible. More than horrible. Boring. When I lived and taught in Korea […]
The school where I work has what’s called a plan center, which is slightly different that a teacher’s lounge (in that it’s not meant for “lounging”). We have this plan center because my school has more teachers than it has classrooms. The school simply isn’t big enough for each teacher to have their own room; […]
There are a lot of things that happen in an educational setting today that didn’t happen when I was in high school. No surprise there — I’m a solidly middle-aged guy, so you’d expect that things would have changed in some way, shape, or form. One change that has become an everyday buzzword in schools […]