Where other cultures have an earth mother, the Aztecs have an earth monster. Their creation myth takes all our ideas about this familiar paradigm and goes topsy-turvy. The female creature from which the earth grew doesn’t nurture her people but terrifies them and demands ritual...
Sometimes, every few weeks during the fall and spring semesters, my home is overrun by a creature I call The Pile. The Pile is a stack of student papers, usually some 25-30 in number, in dry times as few as 10 or 15, at flood-tide (the unholy confluence of, say, two written assignments in...
I don’t know why I thought teaching my History 101 class to make butter would be a good idea. In April of last year I packed two glass mason jars, a pint of heavy cream, some spoons, cheesecloth, bread, and salt before making my long trek to Queens College. As I switched between...
Dispatches From The Front “Only dialogue, which requires critical thinking, is capable of generating critical thinking. Without dialogue, there is no communication, and without communication, there can be no true education….For the truly humanist educator and the authentic...
Dispatches from the Front It is likely that each of us, at one time or another, has engaged in a scathing rant regarding the exploits that the CUNY system inflicts upon those that are so crucial to its existence: namely, its students and adjuncts. Whether or not this implies that you...
Dispatches from the Front It was my first time teaching an evening class at a community college, and I was nervous. I’d heard about how tough these night students are: not your typical, fresh-out-of-high-school, no-extra-job, too-much-time-on-my-hands learners, but cynical, busy,...
