or Thomas Joseph Wilson's Blog
Panic in Our Pockets When Jonathan Haidt came out with The Anxious Generation, I was already well on my way to worrying about my own smartphone usage. As a teacher, I’m at the forefront of being a good role model: at least 150 eyes judge my behavior every week. What I’ve done with my phone…
A year and a half has past since AI came into our lives, and I would like to say my life is relatively the same, but it is not. And this is despite teaching mainly process-driven lessons–focusing students to practice creativity, patience, revision, and deep-thinking, which potentially makes AI more of a helper than a…
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…
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…
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….
The Fears That Bind Us Coming up any sort of stairs was my greatest childhood fear. Sure, I wouldn’t be happy about going down to a dark basement: I’d race for the lights and move slowly around corners. But, for some reason, I felt like going upstairs was like defying a monster’s plan, like you…
Made a YouTube video about rock climbing fall training: