As a veteran educator I have some strong beliefs about what professional development for me and my colleagues across the education sector deserve. This might be my first manifesto. Educators deserve professional development that acknowledges their full humanity in the learning process. Educators deserve professional development that is thoughtful, structured…

Somewhere inside me there’s a real desire to shout: STOP! It appears at the sight of a new webinar/workshop/professional development opportunity in my Twitter feed. It’s there when I notice my inbox filling up with requests to register for, attend, listen to, or watch a broadcast, conference or retreat. So…

I’ve said it before that I’m not a very good dreamer. Like many, I’m more adept at criticizing than proposing and creating. My imagination extends perhaps a little farther than where I presently stand but typically not much further. At best I could call myself a skeptical optimist. On a…

Is interiority a new word? The squiggly red line beneath it suggests that it might be. A quick search informs me, whether new or not, that interiority exists both as a concept and practice in literary circles. Literary agent, Mary Kole defines it “as a character’s thoughts, feelings, reactions, and…

I keep trying to start the same essay. And I kinda hate it. Not the essay, but the trying which Ross Gay tells me is the origin of the word, from the French essai, to try. But it’s maybe not even the trying so much as the feeling prodded to…

In light of recent events, I did what many digital citizens would do: I wrote a thread on Twitter. There are lots of pieces to this and I doubt that I can bring them together again more concisely than in this thread but…

It’s a very recent trend in my reading life that I move through some books with pencil or pen in hand. For a long time, it felt taboo to mark up a book with my own notes and underscoring. Of the many books on my shelves, only very few have…

I have written before that I believe you can write your way out of ignorance. That constitutes both a hope and an excuse. Because I keep. on. writing. I am compelled and I respond. It’s 3am, it’s 5am, it’s 10pm, it’s midnight. There’s the screen, the blinking cursor, that damn…

Miraculously, I have been given the gift of time. A few days to myself which I have used in large part to read, think, exercise, write and sleep. Not gonna lie, the experience has been luxurious in every sense of the word. For the first time in a very long…