I’ve had a number of moments over the last two years where I thought, “I really should start writing songs again.” I’ve put “finish the album” on lists of things to do, New Year’s resolutions, that sort of thing, including this year. My false starts were laughable. Sitting for maybe two minutes twiddling with the …
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Week in Review (July 14-20, 2002)
On Monday, I held my final two official Meets of the year. The US I class had dwindled down to 9 or 10 kids, but we spent a little bit of time talking about the issues they had read about and watched videos for. I can’t say enough about that core group that stuck around …
US History: School’s Out… What Now?
In a typical year where I know I’m going to teach the same subject matter in the new school year, I spend my July doing some kind of professional development, and then spending much of my August designing the overall flow of the year, inserting new ideas for lesson plans borne out of my July …
Smoke, Heat, and Chalk Dust
In my earlier days as a teacher, I was challenged by being given World History to teach. My primary focus had been on American history, and the curriculum for World was unbelievably unwieldy in the 1990s: from the beginning of time to the present, all societies. Yep, the sum total of human history in a …
The Trauma of Shock and Awe
On June 6, a conservative publication called the Washington Free Beacon posted a story about a college lecturer named W. Ajax Peris (I’m not making that up) at the University of California at Los Angeles who was being criticized by students for his conduct in one or two classes involving the history of the civil …
Tuesday Talk… with Gavin Johnson, Part 2
When I talked initially to Gavin about doing an interview he was excited for the chance to talk about some of the issues we were going to cover, but he also thought it would be a good idea for us do a live chat on Facebook. While I’ve done a live interview in front of …
AP Gov: That’s a Wrap!
This morning I met with my AP Gov students for the last time, at least on an official basis. We had a talk about Street Fight and a brief discussion on the shooting of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta over the weekend. It was a bit surreal to end a class this way, with half the …
There are some issues with my new hobby…
In years past I’ve picked up jogging as my main form of kickstarting an exercise/diet regimen to try to make up for many months of neglect. Two years ago I had my most successful summer, combining jogging, intermittent fasting, calorie counting, and bicycling. I was in Bentonville, Arkansas, which is a haven for cyclists and …
Week in Review (June 6-13, 2020)
Just when you think the weeks couldn’t become more jam-packed and eventful, the curves come flying at you from your blind spots. The big news this week, I suppose, was the amazing reaction to the Gavin Johnson interview, which has been read by over a thousand people so far. We’re going to be doing a …
US History: Race and Racism in the United States
There are two major topics in US History I: the creation of the country and its Constitution, and the role of slavery, its abolition, and the aftermath. In the last three or four years I’ve ratcheted up the amount of time I spend on issues involving race in the United States, including the creation of …
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Fenster on Education 