If there is one thing that you shouldn’t do as a teacher, it is belittle students. They are still learning to express themselves, to develop complex ideas and how to test them. Despite knowing that, I couldn’t help but laugh when Scott, a nice but lazy teen, complained about the essay I had assigned him.

Emma was a domestic worker in our small town, where even the poor could sometimes afford a domestic. Emma had worked for my mother from before my birth, and continued to do so occasionally even after my father left, leaving Mom destitute.

I recently finished a biography of Georgia O’Keeffe, and my creative spirit was fed and nurtured by the amazing artist known now as the mother of American modernism.

There’s a popular series of French gold 20 Franc and 100 Franc coins that were produced from around 1870-1898...

It is amazing how many ideas seep in from the past that we aren’t fully cognizant of. It is, of course, easy to point out the negative ones: the racist, xenophobic, sexist, and tribalistic habits of the past can dog us when we’re unaware, and a greater understanding of them can help us more readily guard against them.

When I think of King’s I have a Dream speech at the March on Washington, or his other stirring remarks about the power of truth and love to drive out hate, I also make sure to remember a poem by Bertolt Brecht...

The 55th anniversary, this August, of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, presents a worthy occasion for reflection and remembrance...

In 2007 the US Mint started releasing a new series of dollar coins. The series would include four designs a year for up to ten years and each design would feature the portrait of a US president, in the order in which he served – earning them the name “the presidential dollar series."