A couple of weeks ago I wrote about buying a five gallon Kline and Brown Churn at an auction in North Georgia. Upon doing some research I found that the churn, made in the mid-1880s, was turned at a shop very close where we live and that the clay was very likely dug out of […]
The 9/11 Seawall and the Figurative Seawall: The Empathetic Community
My mother posted the YouTube link I attached below on Facebook last week, and combined with a ‘thank you’ for a good faculty meeting last Tuesday, I forwarded it along to the High School faculty thinking that some faculty members might want to show it to their homeroom advisories at some point. “Boatlift”, the story […]
Becoming a Progress Culture: Keeping the College Process in Mind
I have written often in the last few months about the need to create a school Progress Culture. One of the issues that can paralyze discussions regarding how to move schools beyond the perceived safety of “what we have always done” and toward a progress culture, however, is the college selection process whose shadow stretches back […]
Using Welty and Hayden to Create A Poetry Mashup in Ninth Grade English
In my ninth grade English class we are heading into a study of poetry in the first half of this semester. In order to make a transition from our work with novels (Purple Hibiscus), plays (A Raisin in the Sun), and short stories last fall, we started this week by reading the short story “A […]
A Surprise Purchase and An Unexpected Buckhead Connection: Five Gallon Kline & Brown Churn
At one point just before the crowd started to thin out toward mid-afternoon, the auctioneer, Greg Peters (no relation), had one of his assistants turn on the air-conditioning in the big room that had become stuffy enough for people to start using their xeroxed auction catalogues as fans. Having recently moved to Atlanta from Cleveland, […]