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New Yorker essayist Joseph Mitchell once wrote, “When things get too much for me, I put a wild-flower book and a couple of sandwiches in my pockets and go down to the South Shore of Staten Island and wander around awhile.” It is the first line in “Mr. Hunter’s Grave,” which relates Mitchell’s discovery of an old African-American burial ground still lovingly tended by a local minister. 

We’ve all heard about online courses; ads tout them as the best way to accrue credits on your schedule, and they seem like a handy and cost-effective alternative to traditional classes. But it’s important to understand what you’re really buying into before you make a commitment.

Why do we tell each other stories? For the English teacher, the similarities between fiction and our own lives are clear: both have protagonists and antagonists, characters, relationships, and conflicts. Like the novelist, we develop motifs and metaphors that color our experiences. Though these account for the “hows”, what of the “why”?

There’s a lot of buzz around the term “alternative high school.”  Students (and their parents) who are not performing well in a more traditional setting are looking for other educational options that don’t sacrifice instructional quality.  But what should you be looking for when researching alternative education?

Hooray!  Winter vacation is almost here!  Students throughout the country will be running out of school in the next week and gleefully forgetting everything that they’ve learned in the past four months of school.  Everyone needs a break, but here are some easy tips that will keep that information from melting away:

The first beautiful thing about teaching Ernest Hemingway’s short stories is that a teacher is pretty much guaranteed that every student has read the assigned story by class time. That’s because Hemingway is so readily accessible, so seemingly simple. In fact, when I teach “Indian Camp,” the first story in the collection In Our Time, I tell students, with a straight face, that Hemingway wrote like a nine-year old.

Known for her hands-on teaching, Linli Chin grew up in Malaysia. While she enjoyed all subjects, from an early age she remembers the principles of chemistry, math, and physics coming easily to her. After attending college in Malaysia and at Fresno State University in California, she earned a B.S. at Baruch College with a degree in business and industrial psychology.  During college, Linli had done internships in the financial sector of the business world, but found the environment not to her liking.  “Most of the people lived to work.

Name a game that can be enjoyed by the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, the tall and the short, male and female alike, and that list will be fairly limited.  One that makes it to the shortlist would be BOWLING!  It is a time-tested game that has been enjoyed by millions around the world in various forms.  The one that we are most familiar with is ten-pin bowling in our neighborhood bowling alley.

Teenagers are obsessed with fairness. Every parent with a teenaged child knows that the slightest hint of a perceived injustice will cause a child to yell, “It’s not fair!”  And as parents and educators, we know full well that our decisions and actions will be scrutinized on whether they are fitting and balanced.  

On Tuesday, November 5th, Democratic candidate Bill de Blasio and Republican candidate Joe Lhota will compete for the position of New York City mayor.  Most of our students do not meet the age requirement to vote for either candidate.  Too many students will use this restriction of their age to justify their indifference to the upcoming election.  Indifference, in this case, would be the wrong choice.