I remember once when I was little, trying to dig a hole in the yard deep enough to stand in and look around me at ground-level. Silly and odd, I know. But I wanted to. So I started digging and soon I did have a pretty deep hole, but I was tired and my muscles had begun hurting so I … Read More
why I play
When I was in the 4th grade, all of my friends played soccer and I wanted to play it, too. They all played at the rec department, so when it was the next season, I signed up to play with them. When I want to learn, I like to figure things out by myself. So I tried to figure out … Read More
Learning Independence
I remember the first time I learned that I could control what I learned. It was a sudden burst of freedom unlike anything I had experienced. In first and second grades, my school limited the library to a small section of books that were deemed appropriate. I was bored with the selection of books. I wanted access to the rest … Read More
Rural Learning – School Bus Rides
Growing up in the most rural section of Rhode Island during the 1960’s provided learning experiences that were powerful in ways that are still being revealed to me today. Our town, in those days, did not have a high school, so students were transported to neighboring towns on a tuition basis. For my brother and me, that meant an hour … Read More
My Poems
I am a high school English teacher. The learning communities that I have been a part of that were most powerful were my graduate classes in literature. In most of them a group of 15 or 20 people who loved literature sat in a circle and discussed novels and stories and poems. We batted about ideas, we interpreted and reinterpreted, … Read More
'Enough stick! How about some carrots!'
I have considered patenting a T-shirt with a badly beaten bunny saying, ‘Enough stick! How about some carrots!’ I think of this when addressing my students about my schooling in ‘the day’, and their reaction – wishing for a time machine to return to those practices. First, I must offer a bit of biography. I grew up in a small … Read More
