2013 in Review: A Warning to Young People; Don't Become Teachers

This post became my most popular on Huffington Post, with more than a quarter of a million Facebook likes at last count. Ironically, I submitted this to Huffington Post one day before I was removed from my classroom and escorted out of East Middle School by a police officer.

(The following is my latest Huffington Post blog.)

Nothing I have ever done has brought me as much joy as I have received from teaching children how to write the past 14 years. Helping young writers grow and mature has been richly rewarding and I would not trade my experiences for anything.

That being said, if I were 18 years old and deciding how I want to spend my adult years, the last thing I would want to become is a classroom teacher.

Classroom teachers, especially those who are just out of college and entering the profession, are more stressed and less valued than at any previous time in our history.

2013 in Review: Forget Voter ID Law; we need a voter IQ law

(From March 2013, this was also a Huffington Post blog)

Society will be safer when people can carry guns into churches.

Our standard of living will increase once we get rid of unions and bring business into our states.

We can create a much more educated society if we pay teachers based on standardized test scores and then let them spend all of their time teaching to the test.

We can get a much better crop of teachers if we do nothing but attack them and tell their students and their students’ parents just how worthless the teachers are.

If we eliminate taxes for businesses, they will automatically start hiring people.

All of those propositions wither and fade away when confronted with reason, but the people who keep pushing this snake oil keep returning to office, year after year, election after election.

It’s not Voter ID that this country needs- it’s Voter IQ.