education
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Holden Caulfield Has Left the Building: Reprise
I’m not teaching The Catcher in the Rye this term, but I’m pre-planning next year’s course on novels about adolescence, and wondering whether to include it in the list. The post below, first published in June 2009, grapples with the possibility that maybe it’s not the best choice for today’s youth, at least not those in… Continue reading
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Comment Problems Update
Dear readers: As a followup to problems some of you have been having with leaving comments, I refer you to the link below: Recent Update to Commenting The upshot: if you have a WordPress.com account, and you try to comment using your email address but without signing in to WordPress, the system won’t allow it.… Continue reading
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Comment Problems
Dear readers: Apparently some people are having trouble leaving comments on this blog. If you have tried unsuccessfully to post a comment, or succeeded only after more than one attempt, could you please click the “Contact Siobhan Curious” page above and send me a message letting me know? If you can include info on any… Continue reading
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Things I Learned From Buying a House #1: I Can Do It
You can do things you don’t think you can do. For most of my adult life, I said that I didn’t want to own a house. It was too much responsibility. I was willing to “pay someone else’s mortgage,” as people kept describing it, if it meant that someone else had to call the plumber… Continue reading
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The Uses of Boredom: Reprise
An earlier version of this week’s reprint appeared in July of 2009. It tells the story of how and why I became a reader. And it asks: how do we learn to like challenging tasks if we live in a world where boredom is impossible? * I became a reader because I was bored. I… Continue reading
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What’s a Teacher to Do? Paul Tough’s How Children Succeed
When Paul Tough’s new book, How Children Succeed, arrived in my mailbox, I opened it with great anticipation. I love Tough’s writing; his pieces on This American Life and in The New York Times have always impressed me with their warm, clear prose. What’s more, last year, an excerpt from this book, published in the New York… Continue reading
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When You Are Uncool: Reprise
As promised, today I begin a Thursday series of posts from the archives – posts that have long since disappeared from view but that I still like. New readers may be encountering them for the first time; if you’ve been reading this blog since the beginning, maybe you’ll see something new in the post this… Continue reading
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Ready…Set…Ugh.
Today is the first day of the new school year. I am absolutely, unequivocally uninterested in being here. I feel no excitement about meeting my classes, no anticipation of good things that may unfold. Granted, I also feel no dread. I’m simply unable to connect with the reality of it all. The arrival of the… Continue reading
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Up and At ‘Em
It’s almost that time again. I hope you’ve all had a great summer. Mine has been thrilling, terrifying and exhausting, all on a small domestic scale. You will hear about some of it in the coming weeks. The upshot: school begins on Monday, and I am neither refreshed nor enthusiastic, but I am nothing if… Continue reading
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Who’s to Blame for the Student Strike Mess?
Until now, I haven’t commented on the madness happening in Montreal streets concerning tuition hikes. I haven’t commented because my feelings about the tuition hikes, and the resulting student strikes and protests, are, as a friend recently described his own, “nuanced.” I am not in principle opposed to tuition hikes in Quebec. I AM opposed… Continue reading
About Me
My job is to teach people to read and write; aside from that, I like to learn things.
Classroom as Microcosm 