Author - Don Pogreba

Don Pogreba is a current writer and retired teacher of English, Social Studies and Debate, and a loyal, if often sad, fan of the San Diego Padres and Portland Timbers. When he is not traveling, he is working on his classroom web site or dreaming about another adventure.

Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism by Rachel Maddow

Seven Essential Quotes The evidence will show that they intended to abolish the Republican and Democratic parties. The evidence will show that they intended to abolish freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom from arrest without cause, and all the other civil liberties guaranteed us by the constitution. The...

An End to Inequality by Jonathan Kozol

Seven Essential Quotes Competent teachers do not need to make that choice. They know that children need to be prepared to go out and earn a living when they’re no longer children. The question that many of them ask, however, is whether students who are only six or eight or ten years old ought to be perceived as just so many economic...

Monday Morning Mental Mix March 11, 2024

The Parents in My Classroom– Recently, one of my ninth grade English students told me her parents rewarded her for making the honor roll by allowing her to text them during class. “They like to know what I’m doing in the classroom as it’s happening live,” she said. “We have a cellphone policy,” I reminded her. slate.com He died in...

Monday Morning Mental Mix February 26, 2024

Alabama Ruled Frozen Embryos Are Children — Now What?–Frozen embryos are children under Alabama law, the state’s Supreme Court ruled Friday in a decision that could have a huge impact on fertility treatments in the state. Burdick-Aysenne v. Center for Reproductive Medicine is a pair of consolidated wrongful-death cases brought by...

Flotsam by Erich Maria Remarque

“A crude age. Peace is stabilized with cannon and bombers, humanity with concentration camps and pogroms. We’re living in a time when all standards are turned upside-down, Kern. Today the aggressor is the shepherd of peace, and the beaten and hunted are the troublemakers of the world. What’s more, there are whole races who believe it!”...

A Little Life by Hana Yanagihara

JB wore a perpetual expression of mild disbelief while at his job, both that he should be working at all and that no one had yet thought to recognize his special genius. You won’t understand what I mean now, but someday you will: the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are—not smarter, not cooler...