About a year ago, I decided to begin submitting my writing to literary journals and magazines with real intention.

Over the past couple of years, since I started this newsletter and began, somehow, to place a few pieces in actual publications, I have had at least a dozen colleagues ask me some version of the same question:

“How do you come up with things to write about?”

Teachers know students intensely and temporarily. They are given access to crucial chapters but rarely the whole book. A child arrives with all the urgency of the present tense. For a season, that child’s struggles and habits and gifts occupy real space in the teacher’s mind. Then the child graduates, and the future bends around a corner and out of sight.

“…they start and tremble, they call us by our name, and as soon as we have recognized them the spell is broken. Delivered by us, they have overcome death and return to share our life.”

To say “I had depression” is true in the same way that saying “there was a fire” is true. It names the event, but not the smell of the room afterward. Not the melted plastic. Not the blackened studs. Not the silence of people standing outside with blankets around their shoulders, looking at the place where they used to live.

The closure of MIIS won’t make headlines—but it will make U.S. diplomacy slower, narrower, and less American.

As a new school year settles in, I’ve been reading for formation—habits of conscience, attention, and courage—more than for performance.

The school board meeting was supposed to be dull—budget lines, a bus route tweak, routine approvals.

Managers do not need another think piece about AI. We need our time back. The only useful test is simple, does a workflow return hours to your week.

One of the most enduring myths in leadership, education, and culture is the idea that if something is hard, it must also be good.

If your inbox runs you, your school feels it. Email is where parents share worries, teachers ask for help, vendors send invoices, and board members drop ideas that can change your week.

In the Pacific Ocean, a whale sings at 52 hertz—too high for other whales to hear. Blue whales sing between 10 and 40 hertz, fin whales around 20.

There’s a scene that doesn’t get taught much in schools anymore. Not one of triumph, but of resolve.

I can’t make it twenty feet in my school without being interrupted. Not by emails or emergencies, but by outstretched fists—small, insistent, full of expectation.

At the close of the second quarter, I want to share four books that left a lasting impression on me this spring.

Private school leaders often find themselves overwhelmed, not because they are unwilling to work hard, but because the sheer volume of responsibilities makes it difficult to determine where their efforts are most effective.

It’s hard to remember what American politics once sounded like. Not just the policies or the party platforms, but the tone.

There’s an old story that keeps repeating. Sometimes it ends on a battlefield, sometimes in a bunker, sometimes on a stage, and sometimes in a storm.

Our dog Datsyuk came from a village in Russia and lives his life like a Cold War defector with an active group chat of conspiracy theories.

Artificial intelligence isn’t coming, it’s already here. It’s writing papers, drafting contracts, creating art, analyzing legal arguments, and tutoring students.