Pawnthink and the Power of Personal Narrative
When I orient new students to my school, I always remind them why they're here:"Everybody who's here has screwed up. Either y'all did something, or something happened to you, or you had bad habits and...
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What would you do for a dollar?
Kids struggle with money. No matter what school I've been in, when it's come to understanding how money works, they're lost. It doesn't matter if they're children of privilege or children of...
View ArticleCharter Schools with a Velvet Rope
I love charter schools. I've worked in and for charter schools for the last 10 years and I've never regretted it. I love them, I really do, but it's not the blind, wake-up-thinking-about-them,...
View ArticleWill Work for Food
One of the hardest things for a teenager in South Los Angeles to find is a job. Currently, unemployment for teenagers in the area is running at about 50%, so when one of them does land a job, it's...
View Article1% For Teachers: An Immodest Proposal
"You couldn't pay me enough to do what you do," a friend told me the other day."It's not for everybody," I replied. It's become my stock response in such situations because every time I'm asked that...
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Stay Classy, Occupy LA
We took our daughter to Occupy LA today. She danced a lot and had fun. We were proud of her and proud to be present among those who have decided to pull up stakes and plant themselves on the grass at...
View ArticleLibertarianism and Reality Don't Mix
Every once in a while I listen to something Ron Paul says and I find myself nodding, "Yeah, Ron, I'm glad somebody on the national stage is saying that besides Dennis Kucinich." It's usually something...
View ArticleAn Open Response to Drs. Biggs and Richwine at the Heritage Foundation
Dear Drs. Richwine and Biggs:I read the Heritage Foundation Report on Teaching this morning. I found it because it was referenced at Daily Kos and I read it through over lunch.It had me thinking all...
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What My Grandfather Might Think About OWS
This is my grandfather:From Nick Syracopoulos He was foul-mouthed, direct and unapologetic and he could be embarrassing if you were concerned with what other people thought. He was a political...
View ArticleThe Danger of Pretty Talk: Why Greece Should Default
A while back I was offered the golden opportunity to invest in a Sushi Bar in Hollywood. There were celebrities involved and for a mere $15,000, I would buy my way in to a rock-solid investment that...
View ArticleMarvin Does Time: Why a Kid Chose Jail Over School
Marvin, who I've written about earlier, is back in jail. He was part of a chainsnatch robbery and even though he didn't snatch the chain himself he was there and he was on probation so he's back...
View ArticleAn Open Letter to the Greatest Thinker in the Republican Party (GTRP)
Dear Mr. Ex-Speaker:On Friday, you sir, Mr. Newt Gingrich, cemented your reputation for being the Greatest Thinker in the Republican Party (GTRP). You beat out Rick Perry and Herman Cain by solving...
View ArticleThe Career College Cancer; Destroying Lives for Profit
Social Mobility, the ability to get a leg up and leverage a foothold on the ladder into vertical motion, is the holy grail for anybody who works with or lives in poverty. For those that subsist on the...
View ArticleLearning from Beggars: How to Be Human So People Will See You
Sally asks for money at least once a week. It started small with cadges like, "Singer, you got a dollar for the bus?" I'd give it to her if I had it. Sometimes I'd dip into the cash we keep on hand...
View ArticleGulag Education: Walter Russell Mead and the Death of Liberal Arts
Every once in a while, somebody important takes a break from keeping the world spinning just long enough to point out just how the rest of us aren't pulling our weight. Walter Russel Mead,...
View ArticleGingrich vs. Beck: A Noodle Soup Event
As somebody who loves both words and history, and who blogs under the title "Eminently Credulant Musings," I know a thing or two about speaking quickly and looking serious while saying ridiculous...
View ArticlePidgen-Watts: Life or Death Language Lessons in South LA
I was in the office the other day and ran across a new kid. He was morose, sitting in one of the shit-seats where kids in trouble fidget while they wait to meet with the principal. He stared at me...
View ArticleGoodbye Roberto; A Fond Farewell to A Kid We Couldn't Save
Roberto came to us last year when he was seventeen and had passed only 18 classes in his three year high-school career. A big kid, matching my 6'1" and besting me in weight by a good twenty pounds, he...
View ArticleThe Problem With Not Being Finland
Over the last twelve years, I've taught in a college preparatory alternative school run by the county office of education, a charter arts and business school which I helped to plan and found, and a...
View ArticleEducational Moneyball: Why Value-Added Analysis Will Fail
My students are all on the far side of screwing up in school and if you ask them what went wrong in their education, their answer is almost always a variation on a theme. Somewhere along the line,...
View ArticleNewt's Redemption or, Why Romney Must Sin
In college, while most people were drinking and partying, I was on a spiritual quest. I had been an habitually unhappy person for much of my life and had already discovered that drugs and alcohol were...
View ArticleThe God Trap: Trust and Fear in Modern Politics
There are few countries on Earth with more people who believe in God than right here in the United States of America. According to Gallup, as of June of 2011, upwards of 90% of believed that God...
View ArticleLessons in Capitalism from Oakland
Those of us on the sidelines of capitalism are flabbergasted when some massive international megacorp sues a mom'n'pop operation for copyright infringement because their store name sounds a little bit...
View ArticleErnesto is Dead and It Matters to Me
Yesterday, I was driving home from school and listening to Marketplace when a piece from their series, "My Life is True," aired. It was from a man named Leo Webb and this is what he said:... I just...
View ArticleWhen One of "Those Kids" Goes Back to Jail
Another one of my kids got arrested today. Outgoing, pretty and with a golden smile, she looks like an all-star, but she's one of Those Kids who has some difficulty with the basics of school: she can't...
View ArticleTantalus' Reach: Luis Goes to College!
If you've been reading my posts for a while, you've probably determined that success, as it is normally defined in education, is a rarity in my program. It is rare, but it does happen and Luis is a...
View ArticleSome Truth About Charter Schools
I am a progressive and a member of the California Teachers Association. I am also an advocate for charter schools.Charter Schools have a nasty reputation here at Daily Kos and among many on the left...
View ArticleThe Case for Pacifism and Against Self Defense
Recent discussions have reminded me that pacifism is not popular. Being a pacifist or making arguments against violence and aggression is often met with eye-rolling incredulousness, as if believing...
View ArticleThe Week in Bumper Stickers
It's been a busy week and every once in a while it's good to boil it all down to bumper stickers. Here's my contribution to the DKos bumper-sticker armory. Please please please add yours in the...
View ArticleRomney's Dangerous Racism
So the Romney foreign policy team is open with their belief that a non-white man cannot properly relate to the white experience and therefore cannot properly engage with Western Europe.No surprise....
View ArticleThe Week in Bumper Stickers -- Round two
Here's the second installment of bumper stickers for the week's campaign news. the first installment can be found here. Please add your own and if you like one, take it, make it, stick it and sell...
View ArticleWhen Policy Reaches the Street: Antonio Reaches for the Dream
I first noticed the change when a kid named Antonio walked back into our program a month ago. I'd always liked Antonio -- we'd gotten along well.The kid is nineteen years old, bright, moderately...
View ArticleAllred's October Surprise?
Not a full diary, just wondering if anybody else had seen this report that Gloria Allred is preparing to hold a news conference in which she will release some information that's damaging to Romney....
View ArticleEvery Wasted Day = 38 More Wasted Lives
We can't wait.On Friday we lost twenty children all at once. In twenty five minutes a collective 1,500 years of future life was lost. These children left their clothes on the floor Friday morning and...
View ArticleBeyond Bans -- Other Ideas on Gun Control
Now that the NRA instituted waiting period for discussing gun control in public after a mass shooting has nearly passed, ideas are emerging about which policy changes would be most effective in...
View ArticleThe Right to Bear Arms and Other Alienable Rights
One of the things I find most frustrating in the discussion surrounding the 2nd Amendment in the last week is the conflation of Natural Rights and the human constructed documents designed to protect...
View ArticleAnother Son Murdered
For the third time this year, one of my former students was murdered. He was standing with friends on Imperial Avenue when he was shot four times in the chest by a rival gang member in a passing...
View Article"No Lost Causes" Report by the NCLC
It's been forever and a half since I've posted here, but I wanted to share this with you all. The National Consumer Law Center recently published a report called "No Lost Causes," in which a piece I...
View ArticleRidesharing and Redlining: Uber, Lyft, Race and Class
Edit: Firstly, I apologize for not getting involved in the comments -- y'all overwhelmed me. I'm working my way through them, though. Secondly, thanks to the Uber and Lyft drivers who have messaged...
View ArticleGuess What We Have to Look Forward To!
Earlier today, there was a diary which asked whether people’s issues with Secretary Clinton were based, in-part, in sexism here in the democratic party and places left. I don’t know about that (though...
View ArticleA Moment Away from Pie Fights...
Let’s take a step back. We all care deeply about issues, regardless of which candidate we support (or which candidate we say we cannot support).So, let’s put down the pies for a moment and try to see...
View ArticleWhy Only Two? Reasons for a Two Party System (and what to do about it if we...
Lots of discussion about independent runs these days, whether it would be a good idea or not. People are frustrated. People don’ t feel represented by the Democratic Party (or the Republican Party...
View ArticleThis $#!@ing Debate (Updated to say that the fact that it was all a joke is...
EDIT: Evidently, between the time I started this and finished it, Trump has admitted to punking Bernie Sanders. There will be no debate. My frustration still stands, though because somehow, Senator...
View ArticleAnother F#$@ing Open Letter
This started as my stock comment responding to #BernieorBust and #NeverHillary posts on Facebook, but then I posted in Crashing Vor’s thing today as a comment, and then thought about it some more. Now...
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It's Time to Tell The Truth
This is it. I’ve had enough, and I cannot sit by any longer knowing the truth and not saying anything.We need to blow the lid off this — expose it far and wide. It’s big, and it goes deep. Fox...
View ArticleLove.
I don't know if anybody wants my thoughts on the events in Dallas last night, or on the last in the endless series of shootings of unarmed black men by authorities, but here they are:First: Violence is...
View ArticleDid the Trump White House out our top asset in Russia?
Just a short diary to link to the articles you all really should read. This started out yesterday as a very small side-story on TPM, but this morning Josh Marshall updated it.Essentially, what it...
View ArticleAfter 8 Years of Work, My Book Is On The Shelves
It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything here, but I wanted to share some good personal news.As some of you may have known, along with being a high school teacher, I write fiction. I started...
View ArticleIn Response to Those Arguing for Conditional Americanism
This is something I wrote in response to what I was seeing in Facebook yesterday and today. I posted it there, but I thought it would fit here, as well:My favorite aphorism about being an American...
View ArticleSo now what?
Warning: Long post.Let me start clearly: If you are surprised by the intensity of these protests, by the insistent nature of the movement, by the anger of those involved, or by the calls for drastic...
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