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.
Women in the DRC are pushing for land rights, and curbing gender-based violence in the process–“We learned that women have a legal right to own the land – that it was Congolese law,” Mwa Namupopa says. “We talked about regional, national and international laws protecting women’s rights and how customs cannot be above laws.” www...
Seven Essential Quotes Everybody talks about genocides around the world, but when the killing is slow and spread over a hundred years, no one notices. Where there are no mass graves, no one notices. American outrage is always for show. It has a shelf life.” Babies are smarter than us. It seems they’re always trying to kill themselves...
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...
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...
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...
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...
“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!”...
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...