A Classroom has a Soul
When I was in seminary, I had planned my master’s thesis around the title “Psyche and Spirit in the Classroom.” I see now that this was a skew frame, at an awkw...
Tag: psyche
the unconscious and psychodynamics
Sonar the Sheepdog and Toad the Terror take a personality test!
It’s summer vacation, so it’s time to think about…personality tests! I was speaking with a colleague a few weeks ago about our Myers Briggs types. I have an int...
American Psyche
Originally posted on 10/18/2020, thought I’d share it here. In the ancient Greek used in the Gospels, the word for soul is “psyche”, as contrasted with the word...
Anxiety and Frustration in the Math Classroom: My NCTM Presentation, Fall 2018
It’s been a while! Playing a little catch up. First: Below is the slideshow I presented at the NCTM Regional Conference this past November in Seattle. It’s spar...
Paul made me a Buddhist
I was reading about the apostle Paul over the holiday, and thinking of his participation in a turning point in my life. Early in my Buddhist practice I was volu...
Social and Emotional Factors in the Math Classroom (a few initial notes)
I’m trying this thing where I write a quick blog post after an energizing conversation. Wish me luck! This year at open school night, I gave my students’ parent...
Skillful means for math students and showing up for teacher work
Dear Reader, it is late August! School is beginning soon! For me, that means it’s time to reflect on my goals while I still have the bandwidth to do so. I ended...
To teach the right answers for the wrong reasons/my own experience is not for all seasons
(With apologies to T.S. Eliot…) My students sometimes ask if I actually like math, or what brought me to be a math teacher. I have struggled to answer, and for ...
Teaching for modes of being — play and monasticism
I was pretty ambitious, and notably abstract early on. And come to think of it, I will continue to be. BUT, now I have something a little closer to experience. ...
More like you than you
I’ve often felt an affinity for the marginalized. It comes from an early place in my life of feeling marginalized myself — powerless or less important or unable...
Psyche in the Classroom: Teachers and Therapists
When I first began studying depth psychology, I couldn’t stop thinking about my years of experience teaching math to high school students. It seemed to me then ...
On the “broad and generous spirit…”
In my last post, I ended with Darlene Cohen on the benefits of facing our pain, rather than distracting from it or trying to push it away: …you begin to feel ge...
A meditation on the first day of school
This is a honkadori that I love, based on a story in the Lotus Sutra in which a character doesn’t realize that he’s a bodhisattva, a Buddhist saint dedicated to...
On the power to create
“What is teaching?” A Haiku by Bill Maroon We meet awkwardly I invite you to walk I find you dancing From Teaching and the Religious Imagination by Maria Harris...
On prepping for the first day of school
This week and next, I start at my new job at a progressive school in Manhattan, teaching middle and high school math. This is my fourth school setting, right on...
On systems
Systems are scientific constructs, but I’ll often be talking about them in terms of social justice and theology. I’ll connect them here. A system is a collectio...
About the Theological Engineer
I’m a math-teacher theologian Zen-Buddhist New-Yorker. I have studied and practiced engineering, education, theology, depth psychology, and all of the above app...