In the past ten years or so, in my life outside Academia, I have delved into a course of independent study: a search for a more heart- and spirit-centered way of thinking than the one that predominates within the walls of the Ivy Tower, or in the modern western world. (Like many before me, I… keep reading →

Our first day of this, our seventh year of B-Club, was….well…chaotic. There’s really no other word to describe what invariably happens every year on the first day in which the participants in our multi-age after-school club meet up for the first time, start to get to know each other, and try to figure out what… keep reading →

  I haven’t written in this blog for almost a year. I haven’t known what to say, so I’ve mostly been listening. What words can I possibly offer to the world that will make any kind of difference in the state of affairs in which we find ourselves, as a nation and a world: the… keep reading →

B-Club 2016 is in full swing now. The shift in perspective always surprises me, though I’ve seen it every year. The initial confusion that most of the young adult participants have when they first enter this space begins to fall away. Their critiques of it get suspended, at least a little. Their resistances erode. They… keep reading →

In this post I’ll unpack one brief moment that happened at B-Club last week, and connect it to theories that we have been discussing in my Teacher Education class (which links theory to practice through our work at B-Club). This is exactly what I’m asking students to do, so it’s good for me to try… keep reading →

2007-08 was a year of multiple personal crises as I faced cancer, divorce, five surgeries, the death of my father, and a series of difficult decisions for what one doctor told me was “the most unusual case he had ever seen.” But I was lucky. I survived, and ten years later I am still drawing… keep reading →

From an invited talk in a Mentoring Session for the Language and Social Processes SIG of AERA (April, 2024) I’d like to use this opportunity to offer a tribute to my father, Charles Nicholas Faulstich – who never saw me give an academic talk, partly because when he was alive, I was a junior scholar,… keep reading →

As I begin another spin around the sun, I’ve decided it’s time to lighten my load. Taking inspiration from my mother, who in her later years established a practice she called SOOTHE: “Something Out Of The House Everyday,” I’m getting rid of stuff I don’t need – in my home, my offices, my garage, my… keep reading →

There’s another question that has been nagging me this summer: Why travel?   Perhaps I don’t have to convince readers of this blog of the value of travel. There are already a gazillion blogs on the topic, offering 10 or 13 or 17 or 25+ reasons to leave the comfort of our homes. But why get… keep reading →

Words, like the virus, are circulating madly through invisible networks of exchange these days: words of conviction and certainty, anxiety and fear, blame and shame, praise and support, anger and outrage, compassion and kindness, hope and wonder, terror and grief. Most writers take one tack or another.  Some point to the injustices that the coronavirus… keep reading →