The Class: A Movie Review
by Matthew Koslowski on December 30, 2009
in Movie Reviews
In This Essay |
The Class
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Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring
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My friends have been very supportive of my goal of becoming a teacher. Most of them have offered words of encouragement.
One recommended a movie.
The Class
Too bad I didn’t much like the movie.
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Patrons & Saints
by Matthew Koslowski on December 24, 2009
in Essays
To one of my saints, my dear friend, Emily Baum, with the deepest appreciation.
In This Essay |
On the Shortness of Life by Seneca (C.D.N. Costa, trans.)
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| Late Bloomers by Malcolm Gladwell, The Annals of Culture, The New Yorker |
| On Dying Young by Matthew Koslowski, Literature&Literacy |
| William Stafford, Poet, Wikipedia |
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke (Stephen Mitchell, trans.) |
Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose by Rainer Maria Rilke (Stephen Mitchell, ed. and trans.) |
The Second Four Books of Poems by W.S. Merwin |
“Is there anything I can do to cheer you up?” she asks.
“Sure,” I say. “Just show me a writer — a poet, preferably — who did not a pickup a pen before he was 27 or 30, who amounted to anything, who history remembers.”
These conversations are common.
I expect the normal, well-intentioned platitudes. Often I begin to despair because I have not dedicated myself to my writing. I begin to think that my time is up. “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it,” Seneca whispers. “Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested.” And I begin to think about how I have not invested my time well.
Rilke writes, “…if, as I have said, one feels one could live without writing, then one shouldn’t write at all.” Haven’t I been living without writing? I have not worked on my novel in weeks. Or have I been existing and drifting? Do I really feel that I could live without writing?
“William Stafford,” she says.
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Weekly Review: December 11th to December 17th
by Matthew Koslowski on December 18, 2009
in Weekly Reviews
I am ambivalent when there are too many good things over the course of a week.
My attention is caught among trying to sift through all these different news articles and bring you some of the best that I can find. I want to share all the interesting things that I found but if my attention is strained trying to find them, your attention is just as strained because of the information with which you are trying to keep up yourself.
I hope that you will enjoy the articles that I have included here.
Do you have suggestions on how I can make the Weekly Review more interesting or more useful? Please comment below. I want you to enjoy the Weekly Review and get something out of it. I don’t want to be another aggregator that you ignore.
These Things Caught My Eye
- Ready for Take-Off!
- School Reforms
- How to Think
- Edgar Allan Poe and the Frogpondians
- On Whose Merit?
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Digitally Divided
by Matthew Koslowski on December 16, 2009
in Essays
In This Essay |
| Digital divide narrowed, but lives on for students across US by Annie Gowen, The Washington Post via boston.com |
How do we provide equal access to education when one-third of households do not have Internet access?
In our fervor to embrace technology, we are leaving children behind. We are creating a two classes: the digital haves and the digital have-nots.
The idea of a digital divide had occurred to me before I read Annie Gowen’s article. But the full impact had not occurred to me. I had not thought of how stressful it would be for a child of eleven or twelve to try to juggle getting to and from school when is computer lab is open with getting to and from the library when its computer lab is open.
When I first moved back to Massachusetts after more than six years in Illinois and the Midwest, I lived something of the digital divide myself. My experience illuminates problems the students have.
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Weekly Review: December 4th to December 10th
by Matthew Koslowski on December 11, 2009
in Weekly Reviews
This has been the first week that I’ve managed to keep to a form my dedication, made some weeks back, and worked on my Weekly Review several nights rather than just one. I am still overwhelmed by the streams of information that I am trying to swim in. I am learning to manage, though, and I think the quality of the Weekly Reviews is only going to increase in 2010.
These Things Caught My Eye
- Food and Thought
- Of Great Interest
- Whose Great Books?
- Sticks and Stones
- “Innovative” Education
- What is that beautiful building
