Reflecting & Storytelling About Teaching
For the past 18 years, I’ve taught at secular schools with their own rich sets of values. But Ariel Burger’s Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel’s Classroom brought back memories from my early teaching and, in the process, helped me with two teaching conundrums… Continue reading
It’s hard to imagine a time when publishers believed “teenagers didn’t like to read,” as Laurie Halse Anderson’s Shout remembers. Into this seemingly barren literary landscape in 1999 flared Anderson’s novel Speak, a now-classic work about a girl’s depression… Continue reading
“Step, kick, kick, leap, kick, touch… Again!” As I banged out the opening octaves from the first song of A Chorus Line, the baby grand’s sound filling our black box theater, I realized I should have practiced more. And I definitely should have prepared more for… Continue reading
On a recent summer evening the house was quiet, except for our neighbor’s construction workers sweeping gravel off the driveway. I had just dropped off my younger son at tennis lessons and my older son at cross-country practice… Continue reading
A teacher friend and I have what we like to call a “book club of two.” We meet throughout the year and especially in the summers, on patios on L.A.’s Ventura Boulevard over spinach salad and iced tea, shrimp tacos and sauvignon blanc. We have no specific criteria, but the books we love… Continue reading
This is not one of those stories in which I show myself what I’m capable of or master a feat I’d never imagined accomplishing. Well, it’s sort of one of those stories — but really it’s a story about coaching, mentoring, and teaching. About how our seemingly small comments and actions can accrue to become… Continue reading
When I’ve attended concerts in the past — all artists decidedly from a previous generation — I’ve carried motifs as well as melodies back into my life. With Billy Joel, storytelling laced with a tinge of regret; with the Indigo Girls, social change and righteous indignation; with Bruce Springsteen, evocative yearning for just about everything. Yet until recently, I’ve never… Continue reading
