About

You are on the "About Page."

Welcome.  If you're not one of my students and want to capture the essence of this website, THIS POST sums it up pretty well.

The site is essentially an extra credit blog for students in my classroom.  Students may earn extra credit by reading and discussing the day's post with an adult.

If you're not in my class, please read this next part anyway: as a social studies teacher, I have to cover a lot of topics.  I'm hardly an authority on anything, let alone everything.  If you have any thoughts worth sharing, share them on a post, and they'll probably make their way into my classroom.  If you notice anything I'm teaching incorrectly - or anything I could be doing to teach something more accurately, leave a comment - let me know.

Although many posts deal mainly with my class, several will have universal appeal.  Just browse the sidebar to see if anything interests you.

I do moderate my comments.  I know, that is off-putting for some, but as I have many students and parents who read the blog, I felt this was necessary.  (I won't tell you what brought about the change in policy...  I've promised never to speak or write of that incident again.)

I'm now offering the site out to other teachers to use the extra credit policy as I do.  Technology is so ubiquitous, and so many schools have gone 1:1 that if you're teaching about human capital, you can have your students read a post about human capital and discuss it at home for extra credit.  The code phrases, sentences, etc... are already built in to each post.

So many blogs are about expression.  Expressing opinions or ideas.  I took the title of this blog from an Anna Kamieńska poem entitled, "The Lamp."  The poem opens with the line, "I write in order to comprehend, not to express myself."  Both this blog and my teaching try to follow that idea.  Whether it's on here or in the classroom, I'm not trying to convince anybody to take a side.  I'm fighting for understanding.  When I teach, or when I write, I deepen my understanding of myself.