by Ken Danford | Jan 18, 2021 | Uncategorized
Two of the classes I teach at North Star this year are “Election 2020” and “Race Relations.” This month has felt overwhelming. Where to start? What to say? How can I help teens make sense of what we are seeing every day? There is so much to cover, and so much...
by Ken Danford | Dec 16, 2020 | Uncategorized
This week my daughter Claudia has unceremoniously completed her studies at the University of Vermont, even though we have no graduation gathering to mark the event. She simply turned in her last paper, and that was that. She has written this blog about how she...
by Ken Danford | Oct 15, 2020 | Uncategorized
Somewhere on Long Island, a 14-year-old boy named Eli is concluding his last day of 9th grade online-school-at-home. He has been successfully resisting doing the assignments he considers meaningless, and the hours in front of the screen have felt like a waste of his...
by Ken Danford | Sep 1, 2020 | Uncategorized
I was just minding my own business doing some summer reading when the following passage jumped off the page at me, leaving me stunned contemplating the way history repeats itself with twists and complications. Guess what historical moment of potential long-term school...
by Ken Danford | Jul 1, 2020 | Uncategorized
The rise of Black Lives Matter and the protests against police brutality this spring have led me to reconnect with a high school program I helped to start back in 1983, The Shaker Heights High School Student Group on Race Relations (SGORR.) This reconnection was also...
by Ken Danford | May 11, 2020 | Uncategorized
As a kid, my family, friends, and teachers called me Kenny. I was a bit nerdy, and something of a perfectionist. So when we had to take the annual California Achievement Test, I tried my best to get every answer right. I was annoyed when I didn’t understand the...
