Library

Life

Notes from a life of teaching, reading, and travel.


Life

Anne Frank and the Enchanting Pull of a Nation's Literary Heritage

A personal reflection on how Anne Frank's diary — and reading for the joy of it as a child — grew into a dream of standi...

2 min read ·Jul 30, 2026
Life

Learning How to Learn

In November 2022, Barbara Oakley — the instructor of the Learning How to Learn course I once took on Coursera — came to...

1 min read ·Aug 29, 2026
Life

The Importance of Doing It Over and Over

We cannot expect a short-term effort to give a long-term result.

3 min read ·Aug 29, 2026
Life

Childhood Amnesia

Being told stories, and everything to do with reading and writing, is a large part of what lets a child form early memor...

4 min read ·Aug 29, 2026
Life

Taking Notes Is Creating

Do not create; record life as truthfully as you can.

4 min read ·Aug 29, 2026
Life

What You Are Looking For in a Trip of Your Own

3 questions that turn a trip — even a day trip! — into a life-changing one.

4 min read ·Aug 29, 2026
Life

Priorities in Language Education

If a child is making no progress in a foreign language, the problem may lie in the mother tongue

5 min read ·Aug 29, 2026
Life

In Fact, Every Child Likes Reading and Being Read To

A book that overwhelmed me, that first opened up, and then changed, how I see walking alongside children in READING.

3 min read ·Aug 29, 2026
Life

Timothy Doner, and the Journey Through Languages That Made Him

Tim set out with, and "arrived at", the same interests he had held from beginning to end: languages, history and politic...

3 min read ·Aug 29, 2026