Well, this is the time that, every year, I list my top ten posts of the year. In light blogging years, I’ve limited myself to the top five.

But this year, I only posted three times. This post will be the fourth, so even a top five list will be difficult.

So let me review the three posts I did manage this year, followed by the usual excuses, pledges to do better in the future, etc.

I started with my annual January 1 Blog Birthday post. I’ll probably do one again tomorrow. This one is full of promises to be a better blogger, promises that ring especially hollow looking back on it a year later.

Later in January, I posted a video I created for an online Shakespeare event. This was meant to replace a real-life Shakespeare event I used to attend back when attending events was a thing. In the video, I splice together two speeches from the same character at different points in his life, taken from two different plays.

Jump ahead to November 1. I posted a challenge I hoped would go viral, inviting visitors to cast a Shakespeare play using only the cast of one movie. I did a couple myself. It was fun. Feel free to give it a try.

So those were my three posts for the year, and this one will make four. So, what happened? Well, honestly, I personally had a truly lousy year, and if I were looking for an excuse for not writing, I wouldn’t have to look much past that. However, the real reason I haven’t been blogging is a lot simpler and a lot more positive.

This year, I embarked on a new creative project. I’m not really ready to talk about it yet, but for the moment, we’ll refer to it as Project Bootstrap. I’ve spent a lot of time working on it this year, and have a lot to show for it, though there is much work left to be done before I attempt to unleash it on the world. Any surplus creative energy I may have had this year was spent on that, which is why I didn’t feel the need to come here as often.

In the new year, I hope to be able to do both. Thanks to those who are still here to read this. Happy New Year!

And a warm Rest in Peace to Betty White who left us yesterday. It was a sad note to play out a lousy year.

Today is Sibling’s Day, and I’m pleased to send a shout out to my sister Susan, as well as the honorary brothers and sisters I’ve been lucky to accumulate over the years.

I lost such an adopted brother four years ago today. Larry Cohen and I grew up together throughout childhood and our teenage years. My earliest memories of him are from the second grade play — I was the Scarecrow and he played the Tin Man — though our association must have gone back longer than that since our mothers were best friends. Case in point, I first learned about my mother’s cancer from Larry. She had told Anne Cohen before she told me. A lot of information went through that loop over the years, but none for some time, since I’m the only surviving member of the quartet.

Larry had a sister Lauren, who was Susan’s age, also part of our extended elective family. So when Lauren posted a Facebook request for stories about her brother so her nephew Forest could read about his father, I decided to bring it here, where I could have the space to be as long-winded and self-indulgent as the moment would allow. If that doesn’t interest you today, you can come back on Thursday for the riddle. There won’t be any anagrams or Shakespeare references here. (Well, maybe just one Shakespeare reference towards the end, but that’s it.)

My friendship with Larry spanned well over forty years and through many stages of life, but if I’m being honest, I think of him as my middle-school friend, because that’s about as important as it gets. When you’re as vulnerable as we are at that age, it matters a lot who you choose to trust. Sharing secrets nobody else can know. Co-navigating the social jungle of adolescence. Discovering who you are and who you can help each other become. That’s who Larry and I were to each other. We started out as little boys and we became men together, and we were better men for having done it together. That’s a bond that, once formed, can never be broken, not even now. Not even in death. Because the man I am now came out of that time, and the people who were a part of that will always be a part of me. Period.

We were also part of the same synagogue, and a lot of our social world revolved around events and organizations in the Jewish community. We were observant, but not particularly religious, and services were something we did out of obligation, not devotion. There was one prayer that Larry and I made a little game around. Most Jewish people are very familiar with the commonly recited prayer “Aleinu” (literally “it is upon us”) and its familiar opening line:

The prayer ends with the words u’shemo echad (his name will be one), and in the services I’ve attended, it is sung to a particular tune so that the word u’shemo is repeated three times. Larry and I, as middle-school children, thought it would be funny to point to each other and sing “You schmo” while everyone else was singing u’shemo. So we did, and it was even funnier than we had hoped! What’s more, it got funnier and funnier each time we did it, over the many years we attended services together. I don’t know how two school children in the early 1980’s were able to develop such a sophisticated and wry sense of humor, but you’ll have to trust me — it was comedy gold.

Fast forward through high school and beyond. There are a lot more stories I could tell. Larry and I founded a Students Against Driving Drunk chapter our freshman year of high school, and by our junior year, it had over 100 members. But, for now, I want to push forward to October 2005. My father passed away that month after a year-long battle with cancer. Friends and family — including Larry, Lauren, and Anne — gathered at my mother’s house for the Jewish custom of sitting shiva. For those who haven’t done it, it involves a lot of food, stories about the deceased, and intense community bonding.

At one point, we gathered in the foyer to do prayers, and one of the prayers was the Mourner’s Kaddish. I hadn’t cried for my father’s death before then, but something about saying the Mourner’s Kaddish as an actual mourner brought me to the breaking point. All of the stress that had been building up in my body erupted, and I found myself crying and shaking and pushing my way through a prayer that was overly familiar and yet an entirely new experience for me. Saying the Mourner’s Kaddish for my father may have been one of the worst moments of my life. And then, just like that, it was over, and we were ready to move on to the next prayer in the book.

From across the crowded room, Larry and I made eye contact with each other. Now, obviously, we weren’t going to do it. But that didn’t mean that we couldn’t take advantage of the opportunity to make the other guy laugh at an inappropriate time. Each of us steeled ourselves, prepared for the inevitable moment to come.

Our eyes locked. Neither of us smiled. Neither of us gave a knowing nod. Just a dead stare.

He’s going to break, each of us thought. He’s weak.

The moment had passed without scandal. Each of us turned back to our prayer books. We never spoke of this moment, and I’ve never told this story until now.

But I think it’s worth telling now, because it speaks to a special type of friendship. Saying the Mourner’s Kaddish for my father may have been one of the worst moments of my life. But then, because my middle-school friend was there, I was able to be transported out of that moment and immerse myself into a juvenile game filled with childish nostalgia. That’s a piece of magic. And while I may have a few other friends that I have that kind of a special relationship with, I will never, ever make another one, and so the loss of one of the few I had was immeasurable.

I hope Forest will read this, today or someday, and to him, I offer some words from the poet Shakespeare:

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel.

Sometimes Shakespeare’s lines can be hard to understand, but these aren’t. The friends you make in middle school won’t be your best friends in life. When you’re an adult, you may go years without talking with them. But they hold a special place in your life and should be cherished. You might as well start appreciating them now. And saying the Mourner’s Kaddish for my father was plenty hard for me; I can’t imagine what it will be like for you tomorrow. When you’re older, we’ll get together, and I’ll tell you the real stories.

And one last thing: be respectful during services. Other people around you are trying to pray. Don’t be a knucklehead like your dad was.

John McCain, a war hero turned public servant, passed away yesterday at the age of 81.

From across the political spectrum, tributes too numerous for me to list or link poured in over old media and new media alike. In a moment of apartisan solidarity, I retweeted a touching sentiment from Sarah Palin:

Today we lost an American original. Sen. John McCain was a maverick and a fighter, never afraid to stand for his beliefs. John never took the easy path in life – and through sacrifice and suffering he inspired others to serve something greater than self.

The current president’s tweet was a bit terser: “My deepest sympathies and respect go out to the family of Senator John McCain. Our hearts and prayers are with you!”

Brit Hume, of all people, reacted “Still not a kind word about McCain himself.” Indeed.

From Othello:

He hath a daily beauty in his life
That makes me ugly

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

He may sulk, hit hay at a giant he feels humiliated by.

Another April 23 is now upon us. Each year, on this day, we celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday, acknowledging occasionally that he also died on this date. But as this year marks the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, focus has shifted to the more morbid milestone. And since it was Shakespeare who taught us, in many ways, what it means to us as humans to face our mortality, it seems only fitting to celebrate his legacy on the anniversary of his death.

Celebrity Cruises is marking the occasion with a ten-day Shakespeare-themed cruise, and they have invited me to serve as the resident expert on all things Shakespearean. I’ll be giving a series of four talks onboard the ship, moderating a round-table discussion, and escorting a shore excursion to Kronberg Castle, the real-life inspiration for Hamlet’s Elsinore.

Naturally, I’m extremely excited about the opportunity. I’m not generally one to seek out opportunities to travel, but the chance to geek out on Shakespeare for ten days with some like-minded fellow passengers will be a unique experience. And so, I am resurrecting the blog, so I have a place to chronicle my journey.

I’m writing this from London, and the cruise will embark this evening from Southampton. We will be visiting Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, ending up in Amsterdam on May 2. I’ll post updates here when I can. For example, here is a picture of me at the British Museum last night.

I’ll post more updates when time allows. Till then, unto Southampton do we shift our scene.

In honor of Grant Wiggins.

From Troilus and Cressida:

And this neglection of degree it is
That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose
It hath to climb.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Grant Wiggins: if his white book be prescribed, compose authentically, teach, adapt to the data.

The first edition was white.

How do you measure a life?

One of the most important figures in the field of education died on Tuesday, and there isn’t even a Wikipedia page to update. You can read an excellent obituary for Grant Wiggins on the Education Week website, and I’d like to add a few notes about how his work has affected my own practice, and indeed the way I think about teaching and learning.

I first read Understanding by Design in 2004. The idea behind the process was simple: start with the long-term effect you want to have and work backwards to plan how you will achieve it. What evidence would tell you that you were successful? What tasks can students do to provide this evidence? How can you prepare students to be successful in these tasks? The ideas were so straightforward and intuitively obvious that it was hard to imagine doing it any other way. And yet, that had not been my approach, nor had it been the approach of many of the schools where I worked. Today, all of my schools use Understanding by Design. It was the kind of book that, once read, could not be unread.

Wiggins also wrote of the importance of transfer, the idea that students haven’t really learned the skills if they cannot apply them in unfamiliar situations. His writings on authenticity, teaching concepts using real-world scenarios, were extremely influential in the development of guidelines for the performance tasks that have been so critical to citywide assessment. In retrospect, the ideas that students could only truly demonstrate their learning by through contexts that are both real-world and unfamiliar should have been common sense, but they weren’t widespread before Grant Wiggins.

I met Wiggins in 2008. He was giving a seminar on feedback, another concept that has greatly informed my practice through his teaching. He presented how research shows that feedback — actionable information about the gap between a student’s work and the desired outcome — was a critical factor in learning growth. He discussed what good feedback looks like, and what feedback was most likely to lead to student improvement.

We took a break and I went to the side room to get a cup of coffee. When I returned, I found Grant Wiggins adoringly caressing my brand-new Macbook Air. As I have to carry my computer with me all day, I had bought the super-thin laptop the day it came out, and this was the first time Wiggins had seen one. We had a very pleasant chat about technology, schools, and culture.

Since then, Wiggins has been a voice that I have followed closely on issues of education. His excellent blog provided regular commentary on the field. He usually came down on the same side of controversies as I did, and those rare instances when he didn’t were welcome invitations for me to reexamine my own thinking. I took comfort that his recent call for the state to release the standardized tests was completely in line with my own opinions on the subject. His frequent defense of the Common Core was always based in teaching and learning, rather than politics, which is a refreshing perspective. His voice will be greatly missed.

I once attended a lecture by his Understanding by Design co-author Jay McTighe. He said that none of the teachers in Grant’s kids’ school wanted the Wiggins children in their classes. Can you imagine Grant Wiggins coming in to examine your work on parent-teacher night? But that’s who he was for all of us, the unreserved truth-teller who wasn’t afraid to give us the honest feedback that would lead to our growth. And it did. In a world where academics often use flowery language to impress their colleagues while actually accomplishing very little, Grant Wiggins had the power to shift the thinking of an entire field using concepts that could be expressed, if one so desired, in monosyllabic words. His eloquent expression of those concepts made them even more powerful. It’s almost as though he started with the impact he wanted his writing to have, and then chose words that would be most effective in having that impact.

Rest in peace, Grant Wiggins. By all available measurements, you did what you set out to do.

From Julius Caesar:

The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones;

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Hint: Don’t believe the Twitter shot.

Mandela’s this freedom fighter.

I vote hero.

From Hamlet:

Alas! poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Rest in Peace, James Gandolfini.

An obnoxious kooky mobster? No. I watch him act it.

He wasn’t Tony… rather, I feel, a man of honor in all of his ability.

So, did he know when it came for him?

From A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

A play there is, my lord, some ten words long,
Which is as brief as I have known a play;
But by ten words, my lord, it is too long,
Which makes it tedious.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

My mood? Vocal Roger Ebert had a symbiotic relationship with dry Gene Siskel, then shone solo.

If it was thumbs up or down, it was always kindly.

From Sonnet XLVIII:

And even thence thou wilt be stol’n, I fear,
For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear.

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Irreverent historian Howard Zinn offered to let vast upbeat hope touch fresh lives.