Tag Archive For "teaching"
in Occasions
Apocalyptic Occasion with a Curmudgeonly, Andy-Rooneyesque Beginning
Can you believe the newspaper? Have a look at the last two graphs from a recent article in the business section detailing the long lines and general excitement associated with the release of the new Blackberry Storm: Standing on line in San Francisco’s financial district, Fred Vassard, a systems administrator, said he owns both versions …
in Occasions
What Rough Beast Slouches Toward Bethlehem to Be Born?
I’m in the process of being bludgeoned by three media whales – Ike, Obama vs. McCain, and the meltdown of the financial sector. I can’t check my electronic mail or turn on public radio without encountering “news” about them, and I’ve descended into a sort of meta-panic, not about the “news” but about the fact …
Learning Curves
How Differential Calculus and Reading Employ the Same Skill We build too many walls and not enough bridges. -Sir Isaac Newton It’s fairly widely known, and confirmed in an old NFL Films piece, that former Pittsburgh Steeler Lynn Swan studied ballet in the off-season. I’m sure some of his teammates who spent their free months …
in Responses
Why Cormac McCarthy’s Novels Shouldn’t be Made into Films (or, at least, why the books are better)
While reading prose fiction, occasionally you encounter depictions of physical actions, performed by outsized characters, that come across as so richly visual that it’s natural to wonder whether this piece of prose fiction should in fact be a film or would be better as a film, seen on a giant screen instead of the printed …
in Occasions
Pied Beauty
If you find yourself on Lake Lonely near Saratoga, you see two distinct shorelines, different in many ways. To the south lie the manicured lawns and square-cornered docks of lakefront properties, each separated neatly from the next, cultivated and carved into a perfect waterfront dream house like you see in magazines. Some aren’t yet complete, …
in Responses
Fighting Fire With Arson: A Response to Yale Professor Robert J. Schiller’s misguided but not unexpected piece on the housing bubble, titled “Infectious Exuberance” and appearing in the July/August 2008 Atlantic.
Shiller believes our two recent “epidemics of financial optimism” (the dot-com and real estate bubbles) could be followed by a more disastrous financial epidemic if “irrational pessimism and mistrust” manage to spread from the lips and fingertips of sourpuss chicken-little financial pundits to the wider population. According to the author this third epidemic is easily …
in Occasions
The Pleasure of Despair
Two Russians approached in a spit-shined truck w/corporate logo. I didn’t yet know they were Russians but one look and I knew. The driver had a shiny and ruddy face and a pleasant smile. When he nodded hello, smoldering gray bits of cigarette ash tumbled down his chest. He didn’t seem to notice, expressing immediate …
in Occasions
The World is Too Much With Us
I watched Clash of the Titans last night to perform my solemn FCC-like duty of identifying any language, images, or other content unsuitable for my wife’s 7th grade students. I claimed never to have seen it before, but as Perseus approached his climactic battle with Medusa I admitted that the mechanical owl, Harry Hamlin’s lips, …
in Occasions
Easter Reflections
One must be prepared to lay down one’s life for others, while praying devoutly that one is never called upon to do anything so thoroughly disagreeable. Terry Eagleton in Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic. Since both Mark and Matthew have it that “their eyes were heavy,” it seems clear the Gospel writers want …
Treating Classes Like Gatherings, Part Three: Ending Well(If you haven’t read part one, on establishing purpose, or part two, on facilitating well, I’d [keep reading...]
Treating Classes Like Gatherings, Part Two: Teaching With Generous Authority(If you haven’t read part one, about establishing purpose, consider starting there.) After [keep reading...]
Why Teachers Should Consider Their Classes “Gatherings”Priya Parker’s The Art of Gathering, a book that, as the subtitle suggests, takes up the subject of [keep reading...]