During my time supporting three Assistant Principals and an Associate Principal, I saw all the Discipline on a 5A, highly diverse High school campus. Most is petty and routine: dress code violations, excessive tardiness, insubordination; a subset of chronic cases who had more serious offenses on their records; and maybe a dozen of the truly …
Continue reading School Shootings: It’s Not the Schools, It’s The Guns
The Harvey Weinstein revelations this week have been a particularly loathsome example of the hurdles women still face professionally but for me, it hit rather surprisingly close to home. It brought up a memory I guess I'd have to say I repressed, as it was days in before I realized, standing in my kitchen and …
From my mother, I grew up with very specific ideas about who I am genetically. We were Irish, "Descended from Jonathan Kelly, who stowed away aboard the Mayflower to get here and practice his Catholic faith in freedom from the English swine who stole our language and religion." My mother had opinions on the English. …
It was and is a rough school, where I once worked. The surrounding area and schools feeding into the 5A High School were tough, with a student population of whom more than 50% were Economically Disadvantaged, and there were a lot of the troubles that seem to come with living in a poor neighborhood. There …
How much might such women have accomplished if they had rights? Birth control? Equality?
If you haven't seen the film Hidden Figures, go do so immediately. Also, if you don't want any spoilers read no further but go see the film and then come back. Therefore be warned: SPOILERS AHEAD. There, I've done my spoilery duty. ************************************************** It's Valentine's Day and I am grateful my valentine loves going to …
If we were having coffee, I tell you that looking back over my many years and several election cycles, I cannot remember one where my heart has been so heavy, about which I felt such dread, quadrupled on Friday when FBI Director Comey injected himself, once more against all policy and procedure, into the mess. …
My daughter earned her degrees from the great University of Texas, Austin and one is a Bachelors in Women's and Gender Studies. I love our conversations, even when her clear-headed feminism dispels my own long and closely-held bullshit. Maybe especially when she dispels my culturally ingrained, but ultimately diminishing, bullshit. I was raised to expect praise, get …
Three days after my 18th birthday, my father attempted suicide. His business had failed, he felt he had failed, and he waited until I was old enough to take charge of my, and my mother's, life. He did not succeed, thank God, but it was in the aftermath the real madness began. Unable to deal …
Maybe because in the wake of Orlando, I needed inspiration and so listened to David Foster Wallace's address to Kenyon College, captured in the small book, This is Water, but I've been thinking a lot about choice. All of life is a choice. I know this is not revelatory information I am dropping here; if you're …
Southern Fried Californian 