The daily meanderings of a teacher

Bird Droppings March 18, 2022 To die a happy death: Lately, sitting on my back porch pondering, I think of death. As you get to my age, you realize that the amount of time left is limited, and how can you cram as much life in as possible. In recent months my brother-in-law and my…

Bird Droppings March 17, 2022 What is it we see looking into a child’s eyes? I woke up at my usual time from a dream, thinking I was back twenty or so years getting up and getting the kids all sent off to school, and it was pretty quiet around the house. After walking to…

Bird Droppings March 16, 2022An eclectic morning “Learn as if you were going to live forever. Live as if you were going to die tomorrow.” Mahatma Gandhi It has been quite a few years since I watched an episode of Star Trek. It may have been one of the movies where Spock interfered with Star…

Bird Droppings March 15, 2022Have we sold our souls for a few trinkets? Morning is a special time for me, always a new beginning; today was a bit different as I said goodbye to grandbabies visiting. Always hard to say goodbye to grandbabies. Last weekend we visited with our grandbabies from North Carolina and our…

Bird Droppings March 11, 2022Are we going in the right direction? Today, I was reviewing my student’s online work status two years ago. A couple of surprises and some that were not. I thought to myself when the virus finally moves on, and the smoke clears, some grades will be going up, and some will…

Bird Droppings March 10, 2022Is there a difference between progressive and traditional teachers? In a ninth-grade literature class that I happened to co-teach many years ago, I was introduced to Freedom Writers Diary and the film based on the book. In some ways, the story is similar to the story of Foxfire. Erin Gruell, a…

Bird Droppings March 9, 2022Our teaching can make a difference every day I recall one day that I was looking through data as I sat through a special education training session. This is an exciting situation. I was reviewing data from a recent benchmark test in biology. It is an extremely poorly made and designed…

Bird Droppings March 8, 2022Can we teach a love of learning again? This has been a perplexing time of my life out of the classroom, giving advice here and there to fellow teachers, parents, and students. I recall a car wreck in which a young man died, and his passenger, a good friend of my…

Bird Droppings March 7, 2022Religion is what you make of it “A poor devotee points to the sky and says, ‘God is up there.’ An average devotee says, ‘God dwells in the heart as the Inner Master.’ The best devotee says, ‘God alone is, and everything I perceive is a form of God.’” Ramakrishna Ramakrishna…

Bird Droppings March 4, 2022Teachers! We should always be near the edge. I remember taking groups hiking in North Georgia, and always there is that one person who has to be at the edge of a gorge or edge of the trail, dropping two hundred feet down, looking over, and nearly falling. A few summers…