Don’t expect your students to attend your funeral.
Jeremy S. Adams
Jeremy S. Adams is the author of HOLLOWED OUT: A Warning About America's Next Generation (2021) as well as Riding the Wave (2020, Solution Tree), The Secrets of Timeless Teachers (2016, Rowman & Littlefield) & Full Classrooms, Empty Selves (2012, Middleman Books). He is a graduate of Washington & Lee University and teaches Political Science at both Bakersfield High School and California State University, Bakersfield. He is the recipient of numerous teaching and writing honors including the 2014 California Teacher of the Year Award (Daughters of the American Revolution), was named the 2012 Kern County Teacher of the Year, was a semi-finalist in 2013 for the California Department of Education’s Teachers of the Year Program, and was a finalist in 2014 for the prestigious Carlston Family Foundation National Teacher Award. The California State Senate recently sponsored a resolution in recognition of his achievements in education. He is a 2018 CSUB (California State University, Bakersfield) Hall of Fame inductee.
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Teachers Have Known This for Years: A Generation Hollowed Out
America, Circa 2021 Young Americans are starting back to school in a few weeks and they are in trouble. Deep trouble. After almost a quarter-century teaching at a public high school, I never imagined I would write a book ominously titled, Hollowed Out: A Warning About America’s Next Generation. But, to be blunt, American school teachers have […]
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Opinion: After Trump, Civics Can NEVER Be the Same
I received a powerful but simple text message from my state assemblyman hours after the January 6th siege on the National Capitol: “Your job as a civics educator has never been so important.” [bctt tweet=”“Your job as a civics educator has never been so important.”” username=””] I couldn’t agree more. And yet, for legions of […]
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FIVE Miserable COVID Truths Teachers Don’t Say Out Loud
I had extraordinarily high bookish ambitions when I realized I was going to be stuck at home for a year. As a fan of classical texts and modern classics, I had some woeful gaps in my reading resume. I was going to read John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. I was going to read Ralph Ellison’s, […]
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A Message from the Year 2040: How a Year of COVID Learning Forever Changed My Life
Twenty years ago, I spent my senior year of high school at home. Tens of millions of students shared this situation, and for good reason—a global pandemic raged across the globe for fifteen months, ultimately killing over two million human beings. I remember the recovery wasn’t at all what my classmates and I had hoped […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Zooming into the Abyss: The VANISHING AMERICAN STUDENT
The students have begun to disappear. In the beginning of the school year, when class began every day, I was greeted with a friendly mosaic of smiling teenage faces. This was the beginning of their senior year of high school, and while no one wanted it to commence with the assistance of Zoom and Google […]
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DON’T BE FOOLED: The Fall Will Be Difficult, But Teachers Were Demoralized Long Before COVID-19
Yes, the next few months of American education might well go down as the most challenging time in the careers of most classroom teachers. But the waves of change instigated by the Coronavirus crisis should not obscure the real story of American education. It is this story that policy-makers and parents should heed. While the […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Teaching in the Midst of the Corona Crisis
On Friday afternoon everyone in my classroom suddenly fell silent as we waited for the bell to ring. “I’ll see everyone on Monday, I hope. But who knows?” I had meant it as a throwaway sentiment, a verbal filler to occupy the dead air before the bell rang, ending the oddest, most surreal week in […]