It takes patience to wisely mentor a boy whose imagination and intelligence can do more with a piece of string and a stick than with an Erector set.

Explanation is only minimally helpful. You must put your hands on the work to understand it. Surely this is a Zen moment, a curriculum and pedagogy moment…Is this not a perfect metaphor for the interaction of student, teacher, time and materials, the commerce by which the best learning is accomplished, when the entrepreneurialism of teachers is tapped?

The movie opened with a long, panning shot of the clock on the wall. Ingmar Bergman, would have been proud—a symbol of man’s wrestle with eternity, temporality…and elementary school dust bunnies. But what followed looked more like a Three Stooges micro-burst. On the count of three, cleaning mayhem breaks out.

The voices of gossip, teasing, exclusivity or indifference plead constantly in our daily walk with classmates and colleagues around the schoolyard. Why does it grow harder to say “That’s not fair” to the little stuff, much less the sublime threats to civility?

A lesson in dramatic play, emotional and literary fluency, and maximum use of the dress up corner. Every day of school is an epic journey, and “All’s well that ends well” when you have the golden key, a worthwhile goal in mind, and the support of kind mentors and kindred souls.

I think of Joe every day as I enter my office or visit a classroom, talk on the phone, meet with teachers and parents, watch children at work and play, and think about what schools should mean in a fast-paced evolution that often feels like a collision with unfamiliar demands and opportunities.

He’d had three months to write it. It was due the next day, He was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead…

Simple observation is a valuable skill; It can’t take place with depth and mindfulness if we’re rushing.

For three weeks one summer I stepped out of my comfort zone. It taught me an important lesson about teaching.

Leaving one’s comfort zone is not something that happens very often to most adults. Instead of feeling powerful, in control, …

Whose voice are you? Consider the next generation of readers sitting and growing within earshot of our reading voices…