What is a teacher?  How do you measure the effect they have on the countless numbers of children whose live’s that teacher touches?  How can I look back on the career of my dearly departed friend, Arty Miller, and properly evaluate his role as a teacher in our community?

Our government and pencil pushing bureaucrats think they have the answer, and it looks like this:

According to the bureaucrats and policymakers who dictate education policy, we can effectively measure the worth of a teacher in a calculation that is more complex than Erwin Schrödinger’s differential equation which explains the quantum nature of matter and light (see HERE if you wish to get an idea).  You can, apparently, boil the life’s work of an educator down to a single number.  A good teacher, according to those who don’t teach, can be quantified.  … Read More

As I sit to write this blog entry my best friend, Arty Miller, is dying  has died in a hospital 50 miles away in New York City.  I wrote the other day about our friendship (Click HERE to read) so I wont go into details, suffice to say he is the definition of a true friend.  Over the last week, as his health continued to decline, I found myself faced with the spectre of losing yet another person whom I expected to share the remainder of my time under the sun with.  With each new day’s progressively worse news I found myself taking a mental role call of all the souls in my life that I have lost: All 7 of my uncles, nearly all of my Aunts, several close cousins, both of my Grandmothers, my father and finally Rees.  My family tree, which once was full and verdant … Read More