Teachers who say that it doesn’t matter whether or not students like them have something wrong with their brains. It seems to me that one of a teacher’s greatest tools, an ace in the hole, so to speak, or, conversely, his greatest deficit, is whether or not his students like, love, or hate him. Here’sContinue reading “Difficult Work: It’s A Good Thing They Like Me”
Category Archives: Teaching
Difficult Work: Oh, Let Me Count The Ways
Teaching is bloody difficult work. And don’t let anyone give you that romantic drivel about the three months teachers have off every year as an argument that teachers have some kind of cushy existence. I’ve seen the sticker, and even though it contains a kernel of guilty truthiness for me, I philosophically abhor the message:Continue reading “Difficult Work: Oh, Let Me Count The Ways”
Try Again, Fail Again, Fail Better
The following is the prologue for a work in progress about—you guessed it—teaching. It may become a real book some day, I hope, or, at the very least, a series of related blog entries. Prologue Imagine, it’s August, and I am in the last few days, minutes, and moments of what we call in theContinue reading “Try Again, Fail Again, Fail Better”
Hope Springs in Thermals: The Future of Education
We started playing around with malapropisms in class the other day when a student of mine asked me if I found it annoying when people say things like “it’s a doggy dog world.” Mostly, I’m amused rather than annoyed, I said. I understand that if a person has misheard a word or phrase that sheContinue reading “Hope Springs in Thermals: The Future of Education”
Synchronous Mutability: Ch-ch-changes
Inspired by an allusion in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, I recently shared with my juniors in I.B. English two different poems, both titled “Mutability”, one by Percy Shelley and the other by William Wordsworth, and then for fun I played the Bowie song about the same subject: “Changes.” It took them awhile to catch on, evenContinue reading “Synchronous Mutability: Ch-ch-changes”
michael jarmer 