August | 2025 | Teacher in a strange land
4 posts published by nflanagan during August 2025| Teacher in a strange land
4 posts published by nflanagan during August 2025| Teacher in a strange land
The mainstream media has been full of the bad news: new study shows that reading for pleasure has declined! Fewer people are reading for fun: From 2003 to 2023, the share of Americans who read for pleasure fell 40 percent, a sharp decline that is part of a continuing downward trend. It’s easy to feel […]| Teacher in a strange land
I am a big fan of Jess Piper, a veteran teacher from Missouri, who left the classroom to run for office, and has since reshaped the conversation around why red-staters vote against their own interests. Piper writes often about a childhood spent bouncing around the south, and the family values that influenced her. When people […]| Teacher in a strange land
It’s August. I admit that I am a sucker for the cute back-to-school photos—students holding little chalkboards, shiny floors and carefully stapled bulletin boards. Special props to veteran teachers…| Teacher in a strange land
Maureen Dowd, in a NYT article entitled Attention, Men: Books are Sexy!: Men are reading less. Women make up 80 percent of fiction sales. “Young men have regressed educationally, emotionally and culturally,” David J. Morris wrote in a Times essay titled “The Disappearance of Literary Men Should Worry Everyone.” The fiction gap makes me sad. A man […]| Teacher in a strange land
I’ve been more or less off the grid for the past two weeks, vacationing in Alaska and determined not to let the repellent Epstein Saga or other assorted travesties spoil the snow-capped mountain vi…| Teacher in a strange land
1 post published by nflanagan during July 2025| Teacher in a strange land
Back in the day, I used to go to ed-tech conferences, especially the Michigan Association for Computers Users in Learning (MACUL) gathering. Like everyone else, I was there to find that elusive app…| Teacher in a strange land
So—I am a Democrat. Not a surprise to anyone who regularly reads this blog. I think Democratic thoughts—Health care is a right! Fully support public education!—and support Democratic causes. And la…| Teacher in a strange land
3 posts published by nflanagan during June 2025| Teacher in a strange land
It was the headline that made me read the piece: Let DEI Practices Die. Replace Them With Something Better. I didn’t recognize (and won’t name) the author, but his position as Chair of Ed Reform at the University of Arkansas was a tip-off to what I was about to be served. I read it because […]| Teacher in a strange land
It used to be fairly common in Traverse City, Michigan—a Michael Moore sighting. I once stood in line behind him at a Coldstone Creamery on Front Street (no longer there, alas). During the summer T…| Teacher in a strange land
Cue (the 1970s): Nervous young candidate for a job teaching music steps out of her dad’s car—she doesn’t own a car, yet–in a small Michigan town on the rural outer ring surrounding Detroit, where little villages are interspersed with working farmland. The town is charming, full of old houses and 19th century buildings. The principal […]| Teacher in a strange land
I had a colleague, a long-time third grade teacher, who spent most of August sorting books into leveled baskets, going steady with the laminating machine, and running up colorful curtains for the d…| Teacher in a strange land
More than four years ago, in April 2020, I wrote this ridiculously optimistic piece: A Dozen Good Things that Could (Just Maybe) Happen as a Result of this Pandemic. Every now and then, I pull…| Teacher in a strange land
I am a patriot and I love my country. Because my country is all I know. Jackson Browne Of all the things manifested by the upheaval dividing this nation politically, the appropriation of the concep…| Teacher in a strange land
I have to say this: the left side of the aisle has WAY better memes than the right side. From the bold, white-on-black “I Dissent” to the Martha Gelhorn quote–“If we mean to keep any control …| Teacher in a strange land
3 posts published by nflanagan during June 2024| Teacher in a strange land
Are you reading Jess Piper? If not—start now. Piper is a Missouri educator (among other things) whose commentary on teaching in a bright red state, and having been raised in a fundamentalist church…| Teacher in a strange land
…that isn’t in the regular, designated curriculum. So many things, right? You’ve undoubtedly seen the memes: Why aren’t schools teaching personal finance, including credit cards and taxes? What abo…| Teacher in a strange land
I mostly stay out of the Reading Wars. Not because I don’t have opinions on reading instruction. I emphatically do. I avoid the controversy because—as a lifelong music teacher—expressing that…| Teacher in a strange land
