As anyone who has ever taken a high school French class knows, French high school functions differently from American high school. There’s more emphasis placed on a single test in France than there is in the U.S. (here we tend to spread our attention around to about a dozen), and students get part of their… Read More How to Make College Football and Basketball Work: A Series of Options
Dir. Damien Chazelle. Starring Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons, Paul Reiser People listen to music for repetition, predictability. This is why a three minute ditty on the radio can repeat its chorus three times and no one is bothered, and this is why people in pressed shirts go crazy for Ravel’s Bolero. Even music like Schoenberg’s… Read More Whiplash (2014)
Dir. Pete Docter. Starring Amy Poehler, Kaitlyn Dias, Phyllis Smith That’s my Middle West – not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns but the thrilling, returning trains of my youth and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows… Read More Inside Out (2015)
https://twitter.com/mallelis/status/614830229240950784 Like Mallory Ortberg, I just woke up and found out. Bree Newsome, who appears to have skipped the sugary cereal and cartoons this Saturday morning and went straight to acts of marvelous civil disobedience, went up a flagpole and came down a hero. Nikki Haley, who apparently was waiting on more Fortune 500 CEOs… Read More June 26, 2015
Earlier this evening, I was struck by the fact that the students I taught in my spring practicum would be ending their school year fairly soon. I taught five sections sporadically over the course of several months. Two sections were made up of seniors taking AP Literature; two were made up of sophomores and juniors… Read More Reflections on a Practicum
Seeing Things Secondhand 