Posts Tagged ‘Life’
This is How Gratitude in a Broken World Looks
Tragedy Strikes A few weeks ago, on Monday, November 14, I woke up to the news that three students at the University of Virginia, where I teach–Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr., and D’Sean Perry–had been murdered and two others wounded the night before by another UVa student who opened fire inside a charter bus…
Read MoreWhat Are We Really Teaching Our Kids?
I published this article in Inside Higher Ed in September 2020. Even though it addresses the crisis in education brought about by both COVID and the George Floyd tragedy, its message seems highly relevant to our current climate, as well: What or why to teach are more important considerations than how to teach if we are to…
Read MoreHow to Have Radical Hope in Troubled Times
Hope In The Sadness A few weeks ago it was a beautiful Monday in Northern Virginia, where I celebrated the Fourth of July with my family. I felt good about life and at peace with the world, a rarity for me these days. Late in the afternoon, a headline popped up on my phone…
Read MoreHow The People of Ukraine Are Living Out The Deepest Lessons of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky
Pierre Bezukhov at the Battle of Borodino in War and Peace Ukraine And Russia Whenever I mention that I teach Russian literature these days, I get a weird look of surprise, confusion, or even disgust. I’m not alone. A few weeks ago a German university canceled a class on Dostoyevsky in order to make a…
Read MoreAs Educators, What Can We Learn from the Attack on the Capitol?
A week after protesters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, the pictures are still hard to fathom. While peaceful demonstrations are rightfully a part of life in Washington, this incident is unlike anything we’ve seen in two centuries. The Senate chamber was breached by people wearing combat gear and carrying zip ties. A Confederate…
Read MoreStudents Don’t Need You to be a Perfect Teacher Right Now
In early March, my university administration informed me that I had a week to transition my University of Virginia course Books Behind Bars online. This is a class I’ve been teaching for the past decade, where UVA students meet regularly with incarcerated youth at Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center in Richmond, Virginia to explore questions…
Read MoreHow to Teach Your Kids When You Have No Idea What You’re Doing
As the COVID-19 threat wreaks havoc on our lives, all of us are coping with the utterly unpredictable and traumatic circumstances as best as we can. For parents, in particular, who have been thrust into the role of a full-time stay-at-home mom and/or dad and full-time teacher, this new world is especially terrifying. John Dewey,…
Read MoreHow Great Students Can Change a Teacher’s Life
We’ve all heard stories about great teachers who have changed students’ lives. Far less common are stories from teachers about students who have changed their lives, yet anybody in the teaching profession knows that learning is a reciprocal activity that can have a profound impact on both members of the exchange. Just as there are…
Read MoreI Have a Dream (of a Different Kind of Classroom)
Since the day that Martin Luther King Jr. gave his iconic speech nearly six decades ago in 1963, he has inspired thousands, if not millions, of people to dream bigger. Whether that means standing up against social injustices, volunteering in our community, or contributing to education reform, many of us have been inspired to leave…
Read MoreWhat Mandela Learned From War and Peace: How to Keep Hope Alive in Troubled Times
In Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela singles out War and Peace as a book that had a profound influence on him during his 27-year incarceration. He says that he returned to the novel over and over again, referring to it as his all-time favorite years later. As the world remembers December as the anniversary…
Read More