This article was originally published on August 8, 2015, just after I had finished teaching a summer session of freshman English. Of the 12 students who finished the class, eight of them were combat veterans. I learned more from those guys than I could have imagined at the start of the semester. They were not […]
Accidental Lessons: Redux Read More »
It was my first day of student teaching and I was feeling overwhelmed. I was wearing my only suit, which made me way overdressed and therefore feeling even more out of place. Adding to my discomfort was the fact that my cooperating teacher, as well as two thirds of the school, was out with the
What Education Really Needs is Industrial Strength Voban Read More »
A few months ago, talented, cherubic-faced comedian Tina Fey treated college-educated women like me to yet another celebrity lecture on voting for Trump. Speaking about reproductive rights at an ACLU event, Fey said, “A lot of [the 2016] election was turned by white, college-educated women who now would maybe like to forget about this election
Shiplap, Lots of Shiplap: On Politics, Comedy, and HGTV Read More »
For all of us children of the 1970s, forty years have passed since John Travolta strutted down that Brooklyn street swinging his hips and a paint can to the tune of the Bee Gees’ hit song “Stayin’ Alive.” Film critic Gene Siskel once called Saturday Night Fever his favorite movie–and with good reason. The opening
“You Should [Still] Be Dancing”: Saturday Night Fever at Forty Read More »
Whenever I discuss the trip I took to Barcelona this past summer, the topic of language always comes up. Nearly everyone asks what Catalan is, having guessed that one would speak Spanish everywhere in Spain. In the case that they have heard of Catalan, they will erroneously consider it a dialect of Spanish. If they
What a Language Means: Catalonia’s Linguistic Pride Read More »
“So what do you think of Trump?” my eighty-eight-year-old father-in-law, Arnie, asked. Internally, I winced. I am under standing orders from my wife, reinforced by kicks to my shin under the table, to never discuss politics with her dad. Then I remembered she wasn’t there. Besides, he asked my son, not me. “He’s the most
Fox News Is an Oxymoron Read More »