Barbara Swander Miller
Honoring the journey in everyday life
Category: Education
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The click of her leash.The squeak of the garage door.Brutal wind whips past. Years ago, when I wrote my own curriculum for AP Literature, I included Japanese verse in the poetry unit. I’d been studying Asian literature through the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia and was working to incorporate Japanese, Chinese, and Korean literature…
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“Who are you?” an elderly woman demands as she peers up into my face. I have never met her. A middle-aged man shrugs apologetically, “I should know you, but I forget your name.” I’ve never met him, either. Barely making eye contact, a young person nods at me and shoves a folded paper my way,…
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“Not everyone thinks the way you do,” a friend and coworker once told me. I suppose it was meant to rein in my higher-than-average expectations of myself and others. But as I think about how doomscrolling, social media, and AI are infiltrating, perhaps hijacking, the lives of young people today, I can’t help but think…
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I hope my students never fully know. My bouquet of beliefs may set on my teacher’s desk, for all to notice, in front of where I plan my lessons and confer with scholars, where it brightens my day and eases my stress with the beauty of its unique blossoms and verdure. But it is not…
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Our identities are being taken away, one pronoun at a time. I’m not talking about the gender-based pronouns. During the last few years in the classroom, I just stopped using gender-based personal pronouns for fear of getting them wrong. I resorted to first names when I could remember the new ones, or just “you” as…
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It was the trip to the retirement home that triggered it. Mom had been feeling a little punk lately, so I got her an 18-pack of variety Gatorade. Rather than carry the awkward box and a shopping bag upstairs and across the wing to her apartment, I decided to use one of the cute mini…
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It’s Graduation Season: I see my former students and colleagues as I make the rounds to a few select open houses- of those daring, outstanding students who braved sending an invitation when they know it’s not my thing. “Are you glad you’re not teaching anymore?” “Oh, yeah. Things are so different. Even in just a…
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On the days I dwell in the land of CanDo, just doing things I can do and do do most of the time, my feet slog along, heavily weighted by boring, everyday brown muck. When I venture into the land of MaybeICan, my feet sink into another kind of gunk: Orangey-brown, chartreuse sludge made from…
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on Spring Break Pull off the mask of monotony, the cloak of routine, and allow the joyful voice of your hidden heart to sing with gleeful abandon. Dance! Fling your arms wide to embrace the fresh day with its newly scrubbed face of opportunity. Then wrap the shawl of serenity around your sturdy shoulders that…
