I have been coaching Palmyra Junior Wrestling for 13 years, ten of those as head coach. I do it because I love it, but make no mistake, volunteer or not, it’s a part-time job. Some weeks I put in about 25 hours, and my total time commitment must be over 3,000 hours. [Read more →]
We all have our guilty pleasures. Mine remains the NFL. Although I’ve painfully extricated myself from fantasy; am annoyed for various reasons by the kneeling debate; think the sport is destructive to the minds and bodies of human beings; loathe the league’s “farm system,” big-time college football; and cannot generate a whit of interest among my kids, there I am on a Thursday night, all alone, watching the Ravens and Texans game. [Read more →]
I’ve used this space for some different genres, and here’s a hyper-specific one: The school board election letter. [Read more →]
Okay, there are some mean, nasty people out there with bad ideas, and I think it might actually be a turn of good fortune that we’re seeing them so publicly lately. In general, though, I think people have good intentions. But often, good intentions aren’t good enough. [Read more →]
PALMYRA, NJ — Palmyra High School (PHS) will be the beneficiary of $15,000 in science equipment thanks to a casino night fundraiser conducted by the Palmyra High School Foundation for Educational Excellence (PHSFEE). [Read more →]
I tried so hard to resist this summer, and I nearly did it: I almost made it through those hazy months without scrawling a lament about kids and reading. But now we’re at the end, and I again am coming off another three months of banging my head against the wall trying to get the kids around me to read, so, well, better luck next year. [Read more →]
I’m on a little of a generationist roll here (as much as I get on a roll about anything on this blog), but why not? I collect these tidbits, these links, and I’ve been accumulating many lately about the ever-growing body of evidence that social media overconnectedness threatens mental health — and this is especially the case for young girls. [Read more →]
All my kids are teenagers, so there’s a gap there now. Sometimes it’s a wispy, barely discernible need for space that they express through body language. Other times, it’s an overt, intentional shout for Space! [Read more →]
During my many tournament travels, I often see, in a variety of sports, some poor team or kid getting trounced. They’re in the wrong skill group or age level or something, but it’s a lopsided whupping. Sometimes, especially in more competitive events, that team or kid will have a trainer. [Read more →]
One of the many advantages of my job is that I work at home sometimes, especially in the summer. [Read more →]
I know it’s all too easy to say “this jumped the shark” or “that jumped the shark” about moments in our entertainment-addicted/addled/saturated culture, but a few commercials I’ve seen have really pushed me to wonder how, well, stupid they think we are. [Read more →]
It’s a pretty regular occurrence lately. I’ll be in one part of the house, and I get a text from another part. Now, I know you think that I’m a high-paid blogger, living in a mansion that requires long-distance intra-abode electronic communications, but the truth is that my living arrangements are modest, with all parts reachable via shout, if not slightly elevated voice. [Read more →]
You’re probably hearing more lately about vouchers and what’s called “choice” approaches to schooling. Have your antenna up and look carefully into what these education approaches are about — and what they do to children. [Read more →]
My dad found an old grainy video of my brother and me when we were about 7 and 8 years old doing – what else? – some wrestling on a lawn. He had it converted from 8 mm to a DVD and titled it “Yesterday.” [Read more →]
So I come home from work early and my little guy is playing video games again. Again. I go right into the usual bawling about how he plays video games too much and my wife although she states her agreement with me again — again! — comes up with the excuse this time that I only saw the video game-playing because I came home early. That line of logic – if I came home later that would have meant he’d been on it longer! — drives me to rage. [Read more →]
With three teenagers, I’m getting on the other side of it – could it be this column may have run its course?! – and now I feel I have some hard-earned perspective to provide to people just starting this kid-raising bit. One of my starters: Keep them off the phones as long as you can. [Read more →]
I watched the NCAA wrestling championships the other night and saw the stunning dominance of Penn State. The Nittany Lions won five (of 10, for you non-wrestling folks) individual national titles. Two of those guys beat two-time defending champs. Another was a redshirt freshman who took off the redshirt midway through the year. The other two are buzzsaws. The team won the national team title for the sixth time in seven years. [Read more →]
As a little boy, I had a literate environment in my house, and I myself was a big reader. I remember material literacy moments, such as when I kept sneak-reading my mom’s thrillers, like By Reason of Insanity and The Omen. I recall scaring myself stupid with those books and then coming back for more. I remember how The Lord of Rings trilogy smelled. I remember hiding the Alien “graphic novel” (I mean, that’s what it was) because of the language. [Read more →]
Julianne and I took a trip to Bogotá, Colombia last week. I attended WRAB IV, an international writing research conference, and we stayed at the remarkable Bogotá Bed and Breakfast while being introduced to the wonderful city of Bogotá. In planning this journey, there was a little catch: What we do with our three kids – more specifically, what to do with three teenagers, since, when we returned, all three would be teenagers? [Read more →]
Many of you have no doubt heard about Drexel professor George Ciccariello-Maher‘s December tweet, “All I want for Christmas is white genocide.” Since then, I myself have received some hateful, threatening email, I guess because my address ends with drexel.edu. Groups sending such emails aren’t too selective. [Read more →]
