Author Archives
In 2018 I retired from Weston High School after my 21st year teaching mathematics there. This was also my 44th year as a teacher altogether. Although I’ve retired from Weston, I haven’t retired from teaching: I still teach at Harvard’s Crimson Summer Academy each summer (this coming one will be the 18th!), and I supervise a student teacher through Simmons. For 21 years I taught at the Saturday Course in Milton, MA, and I used to serve on the board of the Dorchester Historical Society.
I read, cook, and spend a lot of time building my model railroad. For some reason I’m left with less free time than would be ideal, considering that I’m supposed to be retired, but somehow I also manage to devote time to my wife, Barbara, and to our excessive number of cats.
Larry Davidson
ljd@larrydavidson.com
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Looking forward (mostly) to another summer of teaching remotely
Tomorrow I will meet my teaching assistants, and two days later I will meet the students in my class. I am looking forward to both. Actually, there are several errors in that short paragraph: My teaching assistants are actually called… Read More ›
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The Art of Violence, by S.J. Rozan
Unusually so for an S.J. Rozan novel, there’s not a whole lot about Chinese-American culture in this one. But it’s fascinating nonetheless. Rather than Chinese-American culture, this time it’s the New York City art world that the reader learns something… Read More ›
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All the Devils are Here, by Louise Penny
Maybe you’re not a Louise Penny fan, though I don’t know why you aren’t. If you aren’t, why aren’t you? It’s possible, of course, that you subscribe to the snobby belief that any New York Times bestseller can’t possibly be… Read More ›
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The “Ich bin ein Berliner” myth. Admit it, you’ve always believed this urban legend, haven’t you?
You know JFK’s famous speech in 1963, where he said “Ich bin ein Berliner,” where the American pedants and English-language German books all claim that it really means “I am a jelly donut,” not “I am a Berliner” as Kennedy… Read More ›
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Inherit the Shoes, by E.J. Copperman
This is a genuinely funny mystery. We need funny these days, don’t we? If you haven’t heard of E.J. Copperman, read my reviews of two of his earlier books: The Question of the Missing Head and its sequel, The Question… Read More ›
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Punching down or punching up?
“Why do we have to have a Black History Month?” whined one of my less favorite Weston students in February of 2016. “Why don’t we have a White History Month?” “Because,” I replied without taking time to think, “every month… Read More ›
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All Girls
As you can tell from the title, this novel is about an all-girls school. Or maybe you can’t tell that, but it’s still true. We’re not talking about a working-class Catholic girls’ school from South Boston, but a traditionally preppy… Read More ›
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Yikes! Lying with statistics! About COVID! And from Massachusetts officials, no less!
Apparently schools are magical places where kids don’t get COVID. You know, because youth. To prove this, the Mass Department of Public Health has just released this informative graph: Look at the bars. As you can tell from a mere… Read More ›
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Finding Freedom (Freedom, Maine, of course—were you thinking of something else?)
Did you go to summer camp in Freedom, Maine? I did. And at least two of my students did. The summer camp in question is Hidden Valley Camp. (No, nothing to do with ranch dressing, as some people claim to… Read More ›
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Kafka on K-12 math education
What, you may wonder, did Franz Kafka have to say about K–12 math education? Probably nothing, you might say to yourself. But you would be wrong. At least according to Ben Orlin. As you know, Kafka’s second-most-famous novel, The Trial,… Read More ›
