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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We need more confusion, not less! (Strategic confusion, that is.)
Schools aren’t built around confusion. We reward students for speed and accuracy (the way we average grades and set rigid deadlines). Our standardized tests place a high value in speed and accuracy rather than nuance and confusion. We value teachers… Read More ›
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Hit and Run, by Lawrence Block
Larry Block will teach you how to write. He can even make a hit man sympathetic. I don’t just mean that Block provides a model of good writing—though he does do that—but also that he has elsewhere written explicit advice… Read More ›
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Did the ancestors of today’s Middle Easterners come from Africa?
Of course they did, you reply. But not so fast! There has, of course, been a lot of interest lately in tracing one’s DNA to find out one’s individual ancestry. But I haven’t seen much about the results of doing… Read More ›
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Star Trek Action, by Terry J. Erdmann
Channel your inner geek by finding out every little detail behind the scenes in a 120-second segment of Star Trek. That’s what you get—three times—in this gorgeous book. But the intended audience clearly doesn’t include me. The problem is that… Read More ›
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Parachutes, by Kelly Yang
Helicopter parents. Tiger moms. Parachutes. What do all these metaphors have in common? If you’ve taught in a suburb like Weston—or in an elite private school—you may know the answer. I certainly knew about helicopter parents, having experienced altogether too… Read More ›
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Emoji and hand gestures
There’s a lot of misinformation about emoji(s) floating around. Aside from the question of whether the plural is “emojis” or “emoji,” we have plenty of people who think the word is etymologically related to “emoticon” and “emo”—but it’s not! The… Read More ›
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Dim sum brunch at Chau Chow!
Barbara and I just got back from brunch at Chau Chow, which has finally re-opened for dine-in dim sum—weekends only for now, and no carts, just ordering from the menu. This is actually an interesting trade-off, as carts let you… Read More ›
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Morning glories!
Morning glories for a glorious morning after the storm has passed!
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(Re)Born in the USA: An Englishman’s love letter to his chosen home, by Roger Bennett
“Tracy Chapman saved my life.” That’s the dramatic opening sentence of Chapter 32 of Roger Bennett’s terrific memoir of his life in Liverpool and his decision to emigrate to the USA and become a naturalized American citizen. As a middle-class… Read More ›
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Zoe Rosenthal is not Lawful Good, by Nancy Werlin
A shout-out to Aaron Gacs for teaching me what a character alignment chart is! That was four or five years ago. If he hadn’t done that, I would never have understood the title of this captivating novel. If, as the… Read More ›
