Upon retiring from public and private school classrooms after 40 years as a physicist who was “called” to teach physics and higher math to college-bound high school juniors (11th grade) and seniors (12th grade), I had accumulated over time certain sayings, thoughts, mores, musings, beliefs, philosophies, etc. I decided to pen 40 of them, one […]
In the wake of my retirement beginning June, 2016, I’ve experienced personally that the positive I’ve done professionally as a Ph.D. scientist who likes to teach (as opposed to a science and math teacher) stands out more than the positive criticism of our educational system I’ve offered in recent years. The wonderful things my former […]
Or, The Ten Commandments for Academically Successful HS Classes Or, Ten-Point Guideline Toward Improving the Problems of Public and Private High Schools (While both Students and Teachers need to be cognizant of all ten for the ideal classroom student/teacher classroom relationship, the first four listed are directly addressed to teachers and administrators, while the last […]
As I have introduced during the summer of 2014 my self-published book, there seems to be (perhaps understandably) a “knee-jerk” reaction — oh, no! Not another stupid, nostalgic writing of high school memoirs! Its title is long and twisted, but the book is “just right” in length, yet also twisted. I named it Some X-Y Type […]
Writings on high school days conjure the descriptor “nostalgia,” and these writings are no exception, but with a very important qualification. These are stories of high school days out-of-the-box — nostalgia “with a twist,” if you please. Typical of high school and college memoirs are books such as No Other Time Like This One, by […]
Returning to the question from the Introduction: Why, then, this prank? It was an impish dream made real by extraordinary, out-of-the-box teenagers — not one, or two, but the improbable grouping of four of us of like mind (4 out of 54). We had the “gall” (or, better, using words from fellow Senior 1964 Joe […]
Replacing education models 1) and 2) with 3) (See 1: Education Reform… and 2: Education Reform…) requires considerable change in how school personnel are organized and how they relate to the students. But the real radical and revolutionary change comes in how we certify teachers, how we get those who want to teach ready to […]
It was the spring of 1963; the east (or, more accurately, the NE) side of the old 3-story Cisco High School building, along with the auditorium, was partitioned off because it was condemned; the town was divided over and squabbling about a bond issue to replace the high school building at a site on the edge […]
If our country is one big room, the elephant in that room is the state of public education. Everybody seems to know there are grave problems, but no one wants to talk about it. Well… almost no one… I am near the end of my teaching career, so I have no reservations in talking about […]