He sat there staring at the page, my last student of the day. He was already twenty minutes late. I was just about to leave work, happy to go home and finish up essays I have to write for clients. This is my last month at my tutoring center where I help high school kids…
Tag: education
Free Range Parenting: I Am Just a Guide
I have always been an advocate of free range parenting, the parent who provides very wide boundaries within which children are free to roam about and explore. And for the most part, for six years, I have been a free range parent. Sure, I hovered a lot when Celaya was very small. It took me…
Personal, Professional, and Political Perspective
When things get really hard, at home because I am overwhelmed, at work because I feel disenchanted, or politically because I feel absolutely hopeless, I remember to put things into perspective. Personal, professional, and political perspective gives me hope. I remember that if I feel this way, someone else must. I am not, after all,…
Energy Never Dies: Passion Provides
I can come home, as I did last night, after an eleven hour shift of standing on my feet and talking to kids about history and government, and write a thousand word essay. I can finish an eleven hour shift for the second day in a row, as I did tonight, still full of energy,…
Truth Teller: Wake Up and Shake Up
A solid educational system should include teaching kids critical thinking skills. Educated kids should be challenging authority. Well educated kids would question everything. Everything. Well educated kids would be pissed, furious at what the grown ups in the room are doing to the country they will inherit. Part of my mission in life, in my…
Read Outside the Box: Love More, Hate Less
I learned very early on that I would have to read outside the box if I wanted to get outside of my small world. Sandra Cisneros, in The House on Mango Street, talks about the confining feeling of her city streets. Escape was unheard of. The scrawny trees stretched their branches toward the sky, desperate,…
Why I Homeschool and Why You Should Too
Our education system is broken. Yes, broken. It is probably broken beyond repair. At this point, I think the only way to fix our education system is to completely scrap it and start over. I am an educator, I have been in education for more than ten years, longer than I have been a mother….
A Twisty Take on Attachment Parenting
“You spoil your babies!” My sister burst out, accusing and laughing at the same time. She had tried, to no avail, to hold my seven month old. Matilda was having none of it. My baby will let you hold her for about 30 seconds until she erupts into full blown crying, wailing, tears and all….