Teacher in a Strange Land: In Praise of Social Studies Teacher in a Strange Land: In Praise of Social Studies In my long and checkered career as a classroom teacher, I taught instrumental and vocal music, mathematics, ESL and the occasional oddball middle school class necessitated by the fact that, as a (qualified) music teacher, my music classes could contractually be huge—so I could …

Concert Praise – Sturgill Simpson I have to call out what was one of the best concerts I’ve been to. Saw Sturgill Simpson last night at the Hampton Coliseum and he tore the house down. As a nearing middle-aged guy, I have serious respect for Sturgill to come out and start right on time at 8:00PM, and he didn’t stop until 30 songs and 3 hours later. I’ve seen Sturgill twice befor…

In Praise of Keith from Sonos ↦ I really enjoyed this story by Rachel Karten about how, amid widespread outrage about a disastrous software update from Sonos, the company’s Social Media Program Lead was doing it right: KeithFromSonos is a Sonos employee who is very active in the r/Sonos subreddit and has somehow won over customers in a particularly tumultuous time for the b…

LPT when you are down, praise others I have gotten into a habit at work of sending kudos and writing letters of reccomendations for others when I’m overall frustrated or not feeling great. I have found that the activity of sitting down to write something good about someone else makes me feel really good and switches my mentality to focus on positives rather than negatives. I just …

In Praise of Middle Managers Amid a wider national atmosphere of division, distrust, bitterness and exhaustion, middle managers are the frontline workers trying to resolve tensions and keep communities working.

In praise of emergency funds Over the last couple of years I’ve been steadily building my emergency fund – my goal is 6 months’ worth of expenses and I’m sitting on about 5 months’ worth now. That account has tempted me once or twice when I wanted to buy a big-ticket item or spend a little extra for a vacation. But I kept my hands off it and just let it sit in an HYSA. I d…