The Rough Draft Diaries with Haley Taylor: “Violins Under the Bed” (wgte.org) There was a popular tweet a few weeks ago about how school spelling bees are traumatic because so many of us can remember when, and how, we got eliminated from them even decades after they happened. I shared my own story from a fifth grade spelling bee almost thirty-five years earlier, when the word I got was “bouquet,” I had the letters lined up in my head the way they should have been,…
Today is the nineteenth anniversary of me launching the .org, so perhaps it was fitting that I used the topic of nostalgia as a launching-off point for my class discussions this past week. By having my students look at the arguments around them about whether or not things were better “back in the day” than they are now — for example, by comparing the old-school rap of my early years to the mumble rap of today — I tried to get my students thinking about…
What Betsy DeVos got wrong about Detroit schools (Detroit Free Press)Education Secretary Betsy DeVos held in civil contempt for violating judge’s order on student loan collection (USA Today) I don’t read that many novels about war — I haven’t been reading many novels at all lately, since I’m chin-deep in research for my next non-fiction book — but I’ve read the same scene in more than a couple of novels, and it’s kind of stuck in my head since I realized how frequently I’ve seen…
[The following blog contains mentions of child abuse.] “I was beginning to think Foucault’s writings on the ‘disciplinary society’ were becoming irrelevant …” (Tweet from Josh Seim)‘I think my bladder changed’: Former teacher describes years without bathroom breaks (Yahoo!) At one of my first adjunct teaching jobs after I got my graduate degree, there was another instructor who was often in the teachers’ lounge at the same time I was, and we did not get along with each other at all. I had a number…
[The following blog contains mentions of bullying, child abuse and spousal abuse.] One of the most formative moments of my young life came when I was on a week-long school trip to a campground in Michigan in sixth grade. At a time when my father’s physical abuse of me and Mom was at its peak, I still really didn’t want to go on this trip because I couldn’t healthily deal with most of my classmates. Making matters worse was that as part of the “fun”…