Dear Hannah - I'm a #StandupStoryteller. I'm the "Brother From Another Planet". Strange people think I am strange. I think that what I experience is strange. And still I rise. I just completed another school year. I am trying to see where I have been ... and where I am going. Sometimes you teach people how to treat you. Sometimes they teach you how to treat them. I have mentioned my 3rd-block class a lot here. In the Spring, we built a certain comfort and familiarity ... which can often breed contempt. Near the end of the school year, I casually referred to my 3rd-block class as "jabronis" while telling them what we would do on that day. I was channeling Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson from his wrestling days. What I did not know, though, was what "The Rock" was "cookin'" when he used the word ...

Dear Hannah - I'm a #StandupStoryteller. I'm the "Brother From Another Planet". Strange people think I am strange. I think that what I experience is strange. And still I rise. I just completed another school year. I am trying to see where I have been ... and where I am going. Math standards changed again this year. Math, though, has not changed. Math is still as universal a language as music. It is a language that is best communicated using words ... plain, simple words. If you read math standards (the old ones or the new ones), the words might get in your way. The math standards are perhaps written by math teachers ... who may not be as adept at "turning a phrase" ... as they are in mistaking rigamarole (unnecessary compilation) with rigor (appropriate level of difficulty) ...

Dear Hannah - I'm a #StandupStoryteller. I'm the "Brother From Another Planet". Strange people think I am strange. I think that what I experience is strange. And still I rise. I just completed another school year. I am trying to see where I have been ... and where I am going. This year, I added "Connections" and another game I call "Category Challenge" to my critical thinking arsenal ... and was able to test it a lot with several classes. Each of these games either list or group items that fit specific categories (a collection of items with common attributes). Each may owe some royalties to the old-school game "Scattergories" that I played in college and grad school ...

Dear Hannah - I'm a #StandupStoryteller. I'm the "Brother From Another Planet". Strange people think I am strange. I think that what I experience is strange. And still I rise. I just completed another school year. I am trying to see where I have been ... and where I am going. In January 2024, my daughter's school won their district level reading bowl ... a reading bowl named for Helen Ruffin ... a Black librarian from the Dekalb County school system ... who envisioned this event as a test or a measure of reading comprehension ... based on all the books that were nominated for this Georgia book award, whose name escapes me ... but I understand the premise of the contest ... and I like contests like this (for the most part) ...

Dear Hannah - I'm a #StandupStoryteller. I'm the "Brother From Another Planet". Strange people think I am strange. I think that what I experience is strange. And still I rise. I just completed another school year. I am trying to see where I have been ... and where I am going. Let me spit some truth serum. "This Masquerade" may never be dismantled. It may be too hard to see it ... to even begin to disrupt it. Why is it so hard to see? Well, *every* school stakeholder group (teachers, administrators, board members, students, parents, and community) has "blind spots" generated by strange, twisted combinations of self-interest, self-promotion, humility, ignorance, arrogance, ambition, hubris, delusion, dishonesty, omniscience, sarcasm, boondoggle, rigamarole, dogmatism, narcissism, classism, elitism, idealism, racism, ageism, chauvinism, feminism ... and several flavors of "buddy complexes" and "savior complexes" ...

Dear Hannah - I'm a #StandupStoryteller. I'm the "Brother From Another Planet". Strange people think I am strange. I think that what I experience is strange. And still I rise. I just completed another school year. I am trying to see where I have been ... and where I am going. I accept that "mental math", critical thinking, and problem solving skills are in rapid decline in our society ... amongst young people and adults. I focus a lot of my energy on countering that trend. You don't have to like math, but ... you must get your money right. When we study exponential functions, it provides an opportunity to introduce one of my "mental money math" favorites ... "The Rule of 72". The "Rule of 72" says that you can estimate the number of years it takes an investment's future value to "double" by dividing 72 by its interest rate (rate of return) ...

Dear Hannah - I'm a #StandupStoryteller. I'm the "Brother From Another Planet". Strange people think I am strange. I think that what I experience is strange. And still I rise. I just completed another school year. I am trying to see where I have been ... and where I am going. Language and discourse are more important than vocabulary. Vocabulary is knowledge of words. If you say "Chuck D's stentorian cadence commands his audience's attention" - you probably have a large vocabulary. Language is the means by which we use words, numbers and sounds to communicate. If you instead say "Chuck D's loud, booming delivery commands his audience's attention" - you have impressive language skills. Discourse is extended verbal expression in speech and writing. If you instead say "Denzel's smooth delivery captivates his audience" - you, my friend, are skilled in discourse ...

Dear Hannah - I'm a #StandupStoryteller. I'm the "Brother From Another Planet". Strange people think I am strange. I think that what I experience is strange. And still I rise. I just completed another school year. I am trying to see where I have been ... and where I am going. I did not do a formal "annual report" last year. This art was the takeaway, though, of my reflection time last Summer. The common ground it establishes is that "all of us could stand to do a little better than we did last year". How do we get there? I answered that rhetorical question with some art ...