The itinerant and the local When people feel ownership over a place, they clean up after themselves. When they expect to leave, they might not be as conscientious, since they may not expect to have to clean up their mess. Schools are better off when teachers stay. Businesses waste less…

California is worth the cost {twelve reasons why} When I first moved from Chicago to Los Angeles, my friends and family displayed mixed responses. Some were purely enthusiastic, fixating on fresh oranges and endless coastline. Others warned that I wouldn’t stay long once I saw the taxes and gas prices…

When I first started teaching, I said yes to everything. I chaperoned the Halloween dance and somehow won the costume contest for taping leaves to myself as a “pile of leaves”. I went on the school trip to France for two weeks during Spring Break and had an amazing if…

I deleted — rather than deactivated — my social media (Facebook + Instagram) a year and a half ago. I had deactivated it before for seasons of my life, but this time, I downloaded the photos I cared about and said goodbye to the platform forever. Here are the pros…

I invited my friend J over and she replied: I loved that response. I had spent most of my life making excuses for why I couldn’t go to a social event if I didn’t want to go. Why wasn’t I honest and just said I was too tired or…

Many people’s impressions of French music is limited to accordions being played by the Seine & Stromae. But I have albums upon albums of French indie pop worth listening to on repeat. Here are my favorites. On by Joyce Jonathan [2018] Though not her most popular album, my favorite is…

A year and a half into the new Makerspace, many organizational improvements have been made, such as: The Thread Farm I drilled holes in a piece of junk wood and cut dowels to 4" each. Then, I stuck the dowels in the wood and organized the thread by color. Now…

One of my first jobs out of college was teaching AP Calculus BC. Since polar coordinates made such beautiful designs, we created stickers from the graphs of their equations. Then, I asked students to analyze and then explain why their sticker looked the way it did. I also asked the…