The daily meanderings of a teacher

Bird Droppings February 3, 2023 Hearing an owl and thinking about happiness “If you observe a really happy man, you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled…

Bird Droppings February 2, 2023For some, creating writing seems so difficult in a digital world, and thinking about Tom Petty “Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.” Aldus Huxley In 1965 I was introduced to this author in a tenth-grade English Class. The…

Bird Droppings January 28, 2023Reconciliation of trust After working around the house this morning, I came upstairs to work on my dissertation. I got sidetracked talking with my wife; about a year ago, she was headed to a funeral in Dublin, Georgia, for her aunt, who had just passed away. Her G.P.S. was taking her…

Bird Droppings January 25, 2023 We have to try and care So far, for this year and the tail end of last year, all the snow, sleet, and ice predicted have never shown up, just cold, foggy, wet, and nasty. It has been unseasonably colder than usual, with scatterings of warm weather still only a…

Bird Droppings January 23, 2023 All in words, we find.. “The farmer channels water to his land. The fletcher whittles his arrows. And the carpenter turns his wood. So the wise direct their mind.” Dhammapada Many years ago, there was a folk song entitled, If I were a carpenter. As I read this passage this…

Bird Droppings January 16, 2023 Horses and Trains and learning It has been many years since I last rode on a train. I mean a serious train going more than the distance between concourses at an airport. Years ago, when I lived in the Philadelphia area, we all used mass transit to commute, go “downtown,”…

Bird Droppings January 14, 202Can we define our success, or does it take another? Recently teachable moments have been rare as I have been very monastic between retirement and Covid and cautious. Yesterday while grocery shopping, I ran into a former student of sorts. She was in a class with me when I was a…

Bird Droppings January 6, 2023 Taking and making the most of each moment and learning about moleskin: I think we need to find the moleskin in education along with switchbacks Sometimes I miss waking up to our dog barking because he needs to run outside for a second. Not always the best way to wake…

Bird Droppings January 5, 2023Quietly listening to Bob Dylan and pondering the word inspiration I woke up a bit earlier than usual, although I did have an excellent night’s sleep. I started thinking about a day thrown off by an administrator’s discipline talk. The afternoon immediately following, we dealt with behavior issues the rest of…

Bird Droppings January 4, 2023Examining the threads of life “Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.” Chief Seattle, 1854 It has been a few years since I read a National Geographic article where the lead-in photo was…