or Thomas Joseph Wilson's Blog
Babies on Planes I am ashamed to say that I used to be rather judgmental if I was seated near a child on an airplane. And if it screamed or kicked my seat, I would dutifully complain about it post-flight. Like I was conferring with those with a similar identity: Child-on-Plane Complainers. “Flight was okay,”…
I have been doing a lot of listening to Huey Lewis and the News lately. It’s not just that they are a great band or because I’ve always loved “The Power of Love” and “If This Is It.” And it’s not because the songs of Huey Lewis and the News and my own human body…
Look. I get it. Times are tough. In America, the strife is hot. But it won’t seem that way if you are holding a baby. That’s right. I’ve been four months into new parenting and those “I’m a dad” realizations have been stalking me. Most of these realizations are cliché and obvious things that if…
1. Twenty-five feet above the ground, I changed my grip and reached for the next hold, straining at the oddness of my body’s position before my feet slipped off the small chips of molded plastic screwed into the climbing wall for the second time in a row. The auto-belay slowly lowered me to the ground….
A Teacher’s Non-American School Experience “No logos or anything like that,” said my mom. She had just explained to me that we needed to take a bunch of precautions for our “vacation.” These precautions seemed more like we were becoming refugees rather than tourists. We were not to wear anything that would pin us as…
Virtual Tools, Real Classroom When you are stressed, practicality is a religion. At the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year, after we went totally virtual when the pandemic hit in March 2020, I was a bit unsettled. We were all starting to live with the virus. Still, the memory of full-on pandemic anxiety–memories like studiously…
I. My Brazilian friend had never seen snow. I couldn’t fathom such a perspective, watching him gawk out the window of the bus that was driving us from the airport to a hotel in Switzerland. We all lived in England, attending the same American school, though many of us were not American. It was February,…
I. No one needs to ask the origin of my neighborhood’s name: Deer Park. Deer walk the streets of Deer Park, Ohio, like humans have yet to take over. They are the living ghosts of nature, sleeping in front yards, staring at you with a tense readiness when you walk past. The penance the deer…
I got into teaching because I was an educational rebel. I was a late bloomer, and while I was a curious person interested in many things, I didn’t put much stock into formal education. I blinded myself to keeping my eyes open for anything by keeping my eyes open to only a bubble’s worth of…
Environmental Control Usually, when you grow up with something, like a childhood of enjoying not-so-pleasant looking ripe bananas–speckled oxidation brown, far from a pristine green or yellow–it becomes normalcy, a state of comfort and not-surprise. It’s eating around the mold. It’s sleeping without worrying that your body will roll out of bed onto the floor….