It's Not Magic, It's Science!

Where has all the vocational training gone? Years ago, teaching in the Bronx in a building that was built in the middle of last century, the school needed more classroom space. There was a large room available on the first floor. The only catch was that the available room was a shop room, complete with tools and kilns. Fast forward a few months and all shop equipment had been ripped out and it had become a standard classroom (in more recent years I think it has been turned into 2 classrooms). My current building is new and was built with an art room. No kilns, but work stations with vices and cabinets specialized for tools. It is being used as an english classroom. I would love to teach the science of cooking but there are no ovens anywhere in the building and no space or funding for them. There are absolutely no shop rooms in the building. In NYC, it seems shop class is dead and vocational schools are few and far between. For many years, the push in NYC schools and in much of the ...

To my students, Life is all about choices. Who you are and will be has not been decided. YOU choose who you want to be. Yes, there are some things about you that you cannot change: your race, sex, sexuality. But there are so many things you can change. And if you don’t like them, change them. But keep in mind, being a complete person takes a life time. Don’t beat yourself up if you are not yet the person you want to be. Your journey has just begun. Who you are today is not who you will be a few years from now. You will change in countless ways.   And you can control the direction of those changes. When I was in middle school, I was shy and very awkward. I wasn’t cool at all . And sometimes that really sucked. I was sensitive, I cried a lot. I was overweight and had super frizzy hair, both of which were pointed out to me and thrown at me as weapons on a regular basis. I had friends but I was by no means popular. This continued for me through college. ...