My wife and I have been attending back-to-school nights for 13 years. Even though our youngest is in middle school and we have two high schoolers and know the routine, we feel a sense of duty to attend and support our kids and their teachers. This year, as I listened to each teacher’s energetic welcome and course description, I was really struck with the scrutiny today’s teachers are under. [Read more →]
In about four months, all my kids will be teenagers (child three is six months away…), so, as a responsible dad, I have had to have various versions of “The Talk.” I’m okay with it. I’m not some sitcom dad, squirming around in discomfort and using incomprehensible metaphors. I’m fine talking candidly to my sons or daughter. For my boys, Donald Trump made this a little easier.
Teachers now are under a great deal of scrutiny because of digital gradebooks. They are expected to update grades on an almost hourly basis and… [Read more →]
I’m in the world of online learning, and I read about this topic most days. Recently I saw an email ad that said, “When a school or district makes the shift to online testing, the top concern of teachers is how to prevent students from cheating.” The “top concern”? While we should be concerned about cheating, let’s not exaggerate its prevalence online. After all, you don’t have to look far to see that people cheat, well, everywhere. [Read more →]
Grade inflation is a popular topic (at least on Google, where the term gives you a quarter million+ hits). A recent article in Inside Higher Ed titled “Grade Inflation, Higher and Higher” examined again a subject that seems to annoy almost everyone. [Read more →]
Maybe it’s because I work at Drexel. We are a different school in many ways, especially because we’re on the quarter system. We’re shifted off a month from other universities. While most freshmen go off to college at the end of August, Drexel students nervously wait for weeks. In June, when everyone else has been done for a month, we’re in finals season. So maybe I’m schedule-weird, but I really want people to stop trying to steal my summer. [Read more →]
Can you dunk a basketball? If not, you are below expectations, because my expectation is that you should be able to. I don’t care if you’re short or are a great soccer player. I don’t care that there aren’t b-ball hoops in your neighborhood. You better find a dunking-specific coach and get to work. And so we have the PARCC test and its mysterious expectations. Yet the New Jersey State Board of Education still recently voted 6-0-1 to make PARCC a graduation requirement by 2020. [Read more →]
It’s summer, and I’m just back from vacation and scraping off some rust. In the spirit of summer reruns (who’s reading now anyway?), I wanted to re”publish” an old piece this week. Observing some activities of late on the political front, I remembered an article I wrote a decade ago that I think works well for my throwback purposes, or at least provides relevant context for my effort to get around writerly laziness. So, here, reprinted in full, is an August 2006 piece from Academic Exchange Extra about Trump University. (Note: This runs long and even comes with citations. Note: It’s not political.)
So Zeppelin won. A jury found that the group did not copy the chords in “Stairway to Heaven” from the band Spirit’s song “Taurus.” [Read more →]
I probably shouldn’t say this because of my chosen path in life, which includes being a parent, educator, and school board member, but I hate graduation ceremonies, or as they are known in a doublespeak kind of way, commencements. And you probably do too — admit it! [Read more →]
So the U.S. men are shaping up a nice run in the Copa América tournament, but many feel that the men’s overall success in the world scene is still not there. [Read more →]
Is it finally over? Is it done yet? Man, do I hate the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. [Read more →]
Every now and again I get myself invited to a dinner or cocktail party. At such an event recently, talking with a few good friends about the complexities of having kids, we came to a jarring and perhaps disheartening conclusion.
Another wrestling season comes to a close. What will I do with all my free time? More importantly, what might those little wrestlers do? Here’s a note I sent to the parents in my wrestling club, Palmyra Junior Wrestling. [Read more →]
I challenge you to a football game. Here are my rules: You have to pick eleven players from your block. I can pick anyone (including, if I like, a player on your block). Let’s go! [Read more →]
This week, I’m simply sharing/linking to an article I published a couple days ago in The Chronicle of Higher Education about a topic that, in many ways, underlies many of the pieces I’ve written here over the years: work-life balance.
The Drexel Football Team is an improv group. And I like it that way. [Read more →]
This is my eighth year as head coach of Palmyra Jr. Wrestling. We have a great group of people who coach, administer, and care for the club. It’s a youth sport for 40 or so wrestlers, but it’s also a community of parents and friends. This position has been a big part of my life for nearly a decade. As I’ve written in this very space, much of youth coaching involves working with parents (and working with yourself). I take that seriously. Below is the 2015-16 version — slightly edited — of a letter I’ve sent out each year to our parents before our first match. It’s my effort to talk about what youth sports mean to me and how wrestling parents can help their young athletes. [Read more →]
For the holidays, a lot of us nowadays give gift cards, those serious plastic rectangles, packed with possibility. We give cash, which flutters out of the shaken, ignored greeting card, all beautiful and real. We Internet shop, where you never see and touch the thing itself. It just appears (soon, by drone!) on your step. [Read more →]
Before I get into this, I want to re-assert that you could only describe me as being avidly involved with youth sports. This is my eighth year as head coach of Palmyra Jr. Wrestling, and I have been coaching Pal-Riv soccer for 12 years. Each year, I spend hundreds of hours planning practices, attending meetings, conducting practices/training, coaching matches and games, and communicating with parents. [Read more →]
