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My maybe-girlfriend asked if we could watch The Simpsons. I knew I had found a wife.

When FXX started airing every single episode in a row last week, it shattered the record for the longest-running marathon in TV history. FXX is airing all 552 episodes of the Simpsons over the course of the next two weeks. Though I have not seen all 552 episodes, I have watched many, and The Simpsons…

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My kindergartener

My daughter enters kindergarten tomorrow. I can’t believe it. Time hasn’t exactly flown by for me. I write to my children every day, reflecting on the day’s events, noting tiny bits of amusement, and selecting photos of time spent together. This process, which I began when I first knew that my wife was pregnant, serves…

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My daughter is making new friends for me

My wife was telling me about a couple who we are scheduled to have dinner with next week. “I don’t know these people,” I said. “How did we meet them?” “Clara introduced us,” Elysha said. “Clara?” I asked. “Our five year-old daughter?” “Yeah. Clara met their daughter on the playground, and then she met the…

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Perfect cure for the first day of school blues

I love my job. I wanted to be a teacher when I was eight years-old, and for a long time in my life, I never thought that dream would come true. When you’re homeless and penniless, college starts to seem like a pipedream. Despite my love for teaching, I love my summers more. This makes…

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Why does writing instruction so often suck?

Slate’s Matthew J.X. Malady offers any number of reasonable answers to this question, but I think the answer is far simpler: Writing instruction at the elementary, middle, and high school levels is taught primarily by teachers who are not writers and do not engage in writing on a regular basis. Most teachers are readers. We…

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There is nothing wrong with a married couple sleeping in separate beds. There’s something very wrong with allowing society to stop you from doing so.

A friend of mine and his wife have separate bedrooms. After a six week business trip, he arrived home to a wife who had never slept better in her life. Since the guest room wasn’t being used, she proposed that he make it his bedroom and allow them to sleep apart each night. He agreed.…

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Love the book. Hate the fact that it only took Bradbury 18 days to write it.

Ray Bradbury was born 94 years today. My favorite Bradbury book, and one of my favorite novels of all time, is Fahrenheit 451. It took Bradbury just 18 days to write the book. Jerk. I realize how unlikely you are to watch an hour long video online, but this talk given by Bradbury in 2001…

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Advice for teachers about to embark on another school year: Stay out of the classroom

I am entering my sixteenth year of teaching this year. I have learned many things over the course of my career. One of them is this. For all of you teachers who are spending hours in your classrooms in the weeks before school starts, aligning bulletin boards along the horizontal and vertical axis, color-coding your…

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Boyhood made all the difference for me.

My friend came over last week and installed a faucet under my sink. This is not the first time I have asked him to help me with a repair. He once spent four long hours on a Friday night unclogging the same sink with me. He has also repaired two lamps for my daughter, though…

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Can you imagine a better way to start the day?

My boy likes to read, which is great. He can’t actually read yet, but you know what I mean.   It’s not quite as great when you’re trying to put him down for a nap and he demands. “Mmm book! Mmm book!” But when I crept into his bedroom yesterday morning and found this, my…

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