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Dark, soulful tales that haunt long after the last page.
I learned what the dreaded “form-letter rejection” was. “Dear Author, thank you for your recent submission to Boogity-Oogity magazine. Your writing shows great promise but our editors decided this story is not right for us at this time.” It was maddening! What was wrong with the story? How can I make it right for you?
Tomorrow morning I’ll join many of my colleagues in voting yes to walk off my job as a teacher on April 2nd. It’s a vote that comes with a lot of anger, a lot of concern for my students, and a lot of fear for my own future. Today our district superintendent laid out what…
State Question 779 was not a good bill. It put the burden of the legislature’s job of funding teacher salaries onto the shoulders of everyone in Oklahoma, hurting the poor the most. And so it failed. One can hope people voted it down because it was a regressive tax and not because they feel like…
A friend and colleague recently showed me this article in last Sunday’s Oklahoman newspaper. The article quotes an educator with some pretty derogatory and fallacious things to say about teachers with emergency and alternative certification. For instance: “Emergency certified personnel may have had zero experience with children, may have achieved a 1.0 grade-point average or…
I have several former students who left me at the end of their senior years filled with determination and plans to inspire young minds the way some teacher(s) had done for them. Some of them are close to graduating from college now. One of them posted a link about yet another school cutting its budget…
I’ve joked for a while about “turning fiddy” and then today it really happened. My odometer of life rolled over the half-century mark. A feeling of depression started to settle over me yesterday, and I really didn’t want to get out of bed this morning. But I did. And I went to school. And magic…
When I was a high school student in the early 1980s I couldn’t have imagined having police officers or Department of Human Services social workers in the building. Now that I teach high school, I can’t imagine doing without them. But it’s happening. I’ve already discussed here how we’re down to one officer for our…
I’m actually getting kind of tired of writing only about education issues. It’s Spring Break. I should be writing fun stuff. But the fight continues, and the Oklahoma Legislature seems determined to end public education. Here’s the text of a letter I just sent to Sen. Anthony Sykes and Rep. Paul Wesselhoft. Very likely it…
Steven E. Wedel 