Steven E. Wedel

Tag: teaching

  • End of May

    I haven’t blogged just to blog in quite a while. So, as I’m sort of between projects and figuring out what to do with myself at the start of summer, I thought I’d do an update on my life. Because both you readers care, right? School’s Out for summer. It was an interesting year. Not […]

  • Family Means Forgiving

    Yesterday I delivered my first sermon. It was for the Class of 2017 baccalaureate ceremony at Western Heights High School, where I’m the English department chairman. Some Facebook friends asked for a copy of the speech, so here it is, pretty much just as delivered. Family Means Forgiving Hello. Thank you to my colleagues, the […]

  • Another Open Letter to Oklahoma Lawmakers

    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 […]

  • The case for alt certified teachers

    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 […]

  • Too Bad Durant Didn’t Take the Thunder with Him

    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 […]

  • Fate and Legacy

    Tonight I said a final farewell to the Western Heights High School Class of 2016.There has really only been one other time I was so reluctant to let go of a group of kids, and even then there weren’t as many that had come to be like family. The idea that I’m going to work […]

  • Thoughts on Turning 50

    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 […]

  • Kids in Need Won’t Find Help

    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 […]

  • Letter to OK Senate and House

    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 […]

  • OK Children to be Taught by Convicts

    If you think the title for this post is pure hyperbole, you haven’t read Senate Bill 1187 closely enough. Among the atrocious things this piece of legislation — passed by the Oklahoma Senate 25-20 on Thursday — does is remove the requirement for school districts to hire certified teachers or do background checks on the […]