The first time I voted, I researched candidates, trying to get down to the nitty gritty. Soaking in the issues and what was at stake. Reaffirming or discarding suppositions of the world. That kind of stuff. You know, democracy stuff. I very much remember that getting past the public relations simplification aspect of policy was…
Category: Essay
The English Teacher Black Hole
I hope I’m not alone in thinking, basically all the time, that I’m just not very good at what I do. I am speaking of a very special imposter syndrome: I’m a high school English teacher. When I was young, I was lackluster in reading the classics or writing essays. I excelled in trying to…
A Regular Consumer Protects his Sleep?
I have two books in my personal library that are begging to be read. They have been perused though. Taken off the shelf, taken stock of, and then put back on the shelf. One because of regular I’ll-get-to-you-later book overloadness and the other due to a healthy amount of anxiety. Regardless, I feel like I’ve…
Writing to an Algorithmic Audience
When you are an English teacher, there are too many ways to teach. In the public view, you are teaching two really important skills: writing and reading. That’s a simplification. Teaching Language Arts is the cornerstone of being thoughtful, creative, patient, empathetic, revision/editing-oriented, network-seeking, analytical, open-minded, reflective, and well-spoken (or at least confident enough to…
Practicality Versus the Human Element; Or Why We Are Not Vulcans
I have been using a fictional race of human beings as an adjective lately. Because with technology where it is, we have more and more distinguished ourselves from a Vulcan lifestyle of logic. Let us pretend, by some trick of the universe, Vulcans replaced us right at this moment. It is night, and you climb…
The Slow Adoption of Digital Annotation
Up until my late 20s, I thought books were sacred objects that were ruined by creases and marks and the like. A book was there to be preserved so as to be enjoyed by later people. It’s a weird thing to think this when you have a book in your personal library, refuse to sell…
Attention Now
I think it’s fair to say that a staple of modern humanity is that we have these fads of going down paths of traditional tool rediscovery, back to making coffee without a machine or putting records on a turntable or driving a manual transmission car. Perhaps these activities are more impractical with today’s technology, but…
Worrying about the Old Ways
Tennessee’s SB 1881 has quietly turned into law. It’s a traditions law, one that probably hits home to any student who has gone through elementary school until a few years ago: The course of instruction in all public schools shall include cursive writing so that students will be able to create readable documents through legible…