When I graduated college I knew I wanted to keep writing, and I did, but instead of what I had been working on—fiction, humor, even a play—I ended up writing a lot about my life in the classroom.
Let’s reminisce! This was 2010. A blogging habit was still something to be ashamed of. But it was becoming clear that internet personalities could make the leap. Political writers like Ezra Klein and Nate Silver got big in 2009; Lil B, the “godfather of internet rap” (whatever that means) rode virality to a debut album in 2010. This wasn’t peak-blog as much as it was peak-blog-optimism. So when I began posting lesson ideas on a blog there was a whole ecosystem of teacher bloggers I was aspiring to join. Even in this tiny world of people who thought too much about worksheets the energy was palpable.
I’d eventually benefit in tangible ways from this energy—a fellowship, speaking opportunities, consulting work, encouragement, attention. If I’d been more savvy and less interested in teaching/writing, I probably could have parlayed this into a fancier job, though probably not a better one.
Professional opportunities aside, this era was very fun. I remember surprising myself by realizing—this must have been 2013 or so—that I was fully satisfied by all this writing about teaching. The itch was scratched. I felt like the smartest people in my field were engaging with my words and that what I was doing mattered, both to me and a community of readers. I can just keep doing this forever, I thought, as the monkey’s paw curled.
By 2017 or so it was clear that the moment had passed. The energy was maybe in social media, or probably it was just gone. I felt this shift in my own little world. Fewer comments. Fewer teachers writing. Less engagement. Friends raptured into consulting work. And while I’d kept writing stories during my peak-blog era, as my friends disappeared I started devoting more attention to humor and fiction.
Laying all this out is on a certain level pretty embarrassing! On so many levels! But can’t stop now!
Over the past…I don’t know, seven years? I’ve maintained two very different writing habits. And I’ve mostly aimed to keep the education and creative worlds separate. Why? You can probably guess why. In my creative work I’m sometimes drawn to weird and extreme subjects—not that extreme, but enough to raise eyebrows at a teaching conference. I’m also very aware that my writing is accessible to students and parents and this makes for a delicate balance. I worry about crossing a line. I’m not saying Mary Gaitskill couldn’t have held down a job as a high school math teacher, but it might’ve been tough. (Especially if she published online. Especially before she was, like, Mary Gaitskill.)
That said: I recently decided to cross the streams, and it felt right.
What does it mean to “cross the streams”? First, I put links to some of my stories at the top of my posts, instead of pretending they didn’t exist. But more substantially I was very excited to send two “creative” things into your inbox:
Curriculum Design is My Passion, where I made silly jokes about math textbooks
How They Solved the Cubic, a historical short story about the battle over the discovery of the cubic formula
Writing these was so much fun. And whatever you might say about these pieces, they’re not “blogging.” Looking back at my output—which is what we’re doing here, this is my “year in review”—what unites my writing isn’t a single topic or theme as much as my desire to do more. I want to write sad math stories. I want to make jokes. I want to chime in on the big educational discussions. I still want to share cool teaching ideas, but I also want to figure out what that idea means, what it connects to, why it matters. All this is different from what I was doing in 2010, and thank goodness.
My favorite education post was my most pedagogical: “Understanding” Shouldn’t Be Vague or Mysterious. I described a way to think about deep learning that I find handy. It’s fairly concrete and has a research pedigree—I think it’s a valuable shift!
Beyond this, in 2025 I often found myself in kvetchmode:
Math Academy Wants To Supercharge Your Learning but I wasn’t impressed by their product.
AI is Maybe Sometimes Better than Nothing although the researchers behind a weak study claimed they’d shown a lot more.
School isn’t Just About Basic Skills and outside of policy discussions everyone seems to know this.
Practice Software is Struggling—it’s because they’re all in on personalized learning.
I Don’t Know What to Think About America’s Declining Test Scores and Neither Should You so stop posting screenshots of graphs.
Kvetchmode is partly a choice—I’m making an effort to connect what I know to what people are talking about. But it also reflects another year where people thought about schools in all the wrong ways.
So, what’s the right way to think about schooling? Late in 2024, I tried to gather thoughts about how schools are in tension between different goals and how that plays out for educational tradeoffs:
It’s a framework that I think holds up.
My first publication came when I was in high school at a now defunct humor site called The Big Jewel. My next came in The American Bystander, a print comedy magazine, where I’ve been a frequent and enthusiastic contributor since 2018. This year the Bystander released issues #30 and #31 and I had work in both.
Yoinlax the Zewd, The American Bystander #30. A washed-up Yiddish novelist desparately wants to get back in the game so he tries to ape a trendy BookTok-style work.
Gravedigger for the Cadaver Synod, The American Bystander #31. Based on a real event—they dug up the previous pope’s decaying corpse to put him on trial. This is the story of the gravedigger who had to do it. (Originally posted here.)
I had two other humor publications:
Honey I Have No Clue What You’re Talking About—I Did Not Use AI To Write My Wedding Vows, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Self-explanatory, see title.
Praise for My Debut Novel, Points in Case. You know those blurbs on the back of a book? What if they were really strange?
I love funny writing, but at some point I started to bristle at its limitations. (Or maybe it’s my own limitations as a funny writer, I don’t know.) Lately I’ve been trying hard to improve as a not-necessarily-funny story writer, and I (finally!) had a bunch of stories published in non-comedic litmags:
Groucho’s Full Quote, BULL. “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read. Don’t ask how I know, it’s a terrible story. And since you didn’t ask, I’ll tell…”
The Thing in the Jar, hex. “At a certain point the bullying became impossible to ignore. Which was how Danny and I ended up in Dr. Epstein’s office…”
The Gorgeous Fly, HAD. “When she was eight my daughter biked past a five-foot tall shrub without looking and was hit by a car coming out of the alley. Thank goodness she was fine, though she’d broken her leg in several places…”
Stupid Wolves, Outlook Springs. “In the beginning God created heaven and earth.
But something felt off, so he destroyed it and began again…”Oh Daniel, MoonPark Review. “My wife placed my hand on her leg, but when I slipped under her nightdress she pushed me away. “Are you crazy?” she said…”
You’re Okay Champ, Farewell Transmission. Finally, a poem, pretty directly inspired by Maurice Mannging’s wonderful collection “Bucolics.”
And one last little nice thing, or actually two of them—MoonPark Review nominated “Oh Daniel” for a Pushcart Prize, and Outlook Springs nominated “Stupid Wolves” for Best Small Fictions. I don’t think awards matter but it feels great that the editors liked these stories enough to nominate them.
I’m sure I won’t have this many publications in 2026. I’ve been stuck on a few projects and, honestly, feeling very frustrated about my lack of progress. These are also longer narratives, so who knows how long they’ll take to finish? I still very much feel as if I’m trying to figure this out.
My vision for this year is to keep going. I think I’m headed in the right direction, more or less. If you subscribe to this newsletter…well, first of all, thank you very much! It means a lot to me that you’re here. If you subscribe, I think you can expect more of the same in 2026. Not making any promises, but I have a cranky education piece that I’ve been thinking about, another historical math episode that I’ve been researching, and an endless supply of ridiculous textbook images.
This is all, I admit, a little bit weird. But you know what? Writing a newsletter about is a little bit weird. I’m going to lean into it. Thanks for sticking around!
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