I recently got a call during my first-period class informing me that I would be spending my staff meeting/prep time later that day covering a last-period science class. Usually, in-house teachers only cover for other teachers because of meetings, events…
Right now, my grade partner and I are photocopying the entire math curriculum for our students. Seriously. Our school has hardly any books, and kids can’t pass standardized tests without a math curriculum. So we’re using paper donations to photocopy…
Until I retired a few years ago, I taught science in the Philadelphia public schools. One year, my administrators gave me a ninth grade English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) class. I went to the person in charge of ESL, and asked if there…
One afternoon, about three years ago, I watched my student “Michelle” standing in our elementary schoolyard with her pink book bag and her little barrettes bouncing, waiting for her daddy to pick her up. Michelle had been born right after…
