Here's What I'm Thinking
Greetings on the occasion of a first blog right up against the beginning of the year. It's usually pretty easy to tell when a school year ends (squeals of triumph and joy usually are a dead giveaway),...
View ArticleNematocerid No Match For Frictionless Plane
Ever since our family laid eyes on the beautiful home that goes by the name "Park House" at Lawrence, we have been imagining the ways we might be able to make it not just our home, but a place to rest,...
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New ViewsInitial plans for Blog 3 called for a full "My First Mountain Day" retrospective, but given the fact that the website will most likely bring you pictures worth 1,000,000 words, I will...
View ArticleIn Support of Winterim
You would think that hitting a drive on the same golf hole 17 times would lead to some expertise. Yet there I was at the 17th tee at the Gagne Winterim Golf Classic Monday hitting my 17th drive with a...
View Article90 Minutes
Following are some of the common, yet rare elements you might have encountered last Friday night on a 90 minute stroll through one part of campus, as the day's misty rains ceased in anticipation of...
View ArticleDevelopmental Treats
Forgive me internet, for I have slipped: it has been 2 weeks since my last blog. It's been a pretty interesting two weeks: Parents' Weekend, trustee meetings, an accreditation visit...that didn't...
View ArticleProfessional Development
For much of the past week, I was not on campus. In fact, I was WAY off campus, primarily on retreat at a conference center amongst the summits of the Santa Cruz mountains in California. The retreat was...
View ArticleWishing You Well
The following is a closing piece that didn't quite make it into the Holiday Assembly on the Tuesday before break. It is a mediocre poem I wrote that I would have read right after the traditional...
View Article"On Being Here"
I don't know what it is about this pesky internet, but there's something about the media that makes one want to go all confessional. The contrast between the desire for disclosure and the total...
View ArticleSkeptical About Cynicism
My work in a range of school settings has convinced me that cynicism is one of the great toxins in an educational environment. That is to say, the strong presence of cynicism in a school community,...
View ArticleCore Work
We are entering exam week as I write. Final exams bring up associations of over-caffeination, scattered index cards, writer's cramp, and general joint and soul pain. Not exactly therapies aimed at...
View ArticleKnow Your Acronyms
Amazingly, winter's grimy grip has been reduced to a few sad, speckled snow banks. One of the more meteorologically disturbing March's on record has yielded, as always, to the pleasantries of April.On...
View ArticleSome Assembly Required
At the request of the "Spoken Word Club," I composed and then recited at assembly what could possibly be called a poem as an advertisement for a meeting of their club. The title (also the title of this...
View ArticleConsider the Alstroemeria
I dropped in on a Biology class the other day and was fortunate to observe a flower dissection. Considering the alternatives (and considering the pre-lunch hour), the flowers were agreeable subjects....
View ArticleGlad To Be Back (!)(?)(.)
Here we are on the brink of another school year. What other occasion can so thoroughly mix dread, elation, expectation and denial? The fact that "Back-to- School" is a commercial and cultural event on...
View ArticleSee Change, Love Change, Be Change
The school year hasn't started, seasonal and commercial signs to the contrary. And yet, a recent trip to see Lawrence Academy students perform See Change at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland...
View ArticleLight Reading, Heavy Lifting
There are two recent arrivals sitting on my desk as I write. The first is The New York Times Magazine, from Sunday, September 15th. It features a number of topics for our educational consideration,...
View ArticleA Parents' Weekend Homework Assignment
Assuming that the audience for this transmission is mainly parents, let me reinforce the wonderfully inverted phenomenon of this coming Saturday, October 12th: as many Lawrence students rest and relax,...
View ArticleMixing the Masterful with the Playful
Recent publications and broadcasts have emphasized big ideas relating to campus master planning and other "Long View" notions. In writing and speaking about such matters, I have simultaneously wanted...
View ArticleThankful
Last Wednesday in the relatively quiet anxiety of exam week I was OD, the LA insider term for the administrator who is "On Duty" on a given night, with the assignment of beneficently keeping an eye on...
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