October 9, 2021
I remember my first day of swim practice, way back when I was six years old. It was at the Little Rock Boys’ Club and Coach Brooks led the workouts. It was my first experience in a locker room, where I quickly learned that even though I was small enough to do it, you don’t […]
September 20, 2021
We have lived in our neighborhood for almost 30 years now. There are so many great parts of living here – the weather is spectacular, the beach is a ten-minute walk from our home (we can’t see it, but we can hear the waves in the morning), and we are right up against the beautiful […]
September 11, 2021
I love driving by the stunningly beautiful Pepperdine University campus, located on Pacific Coast Highway overlooking the Malibu coast, especially in early fall. Just 10 miles from my home, I passed it on my commute twice a day, every day, for about 17 years. The university’s close proximity was a key factor in the decision […]
August 29, 2021
Pop-tops. Some call them pull tabs. What a lousy invention. But they were everywhere when I was growing up. Today, when you open a soda or beer can, you use a Sta-tab, which is what you find on nearly every can in the world these days. Daniel F. Cudzik was the engineer working at Reynolds […]
August 18, 2021
That was it. Dawson gave each of us a long and hard hug, picked up the last bit of dorm room essentials from our double Target run, turned around, and walked off to his dorm in the Colorado School of Mines. Oredigger Camp – his three-day orientation – starts tomorrow. He is fired up and […]
June 18, 2021
In my first ten years with with the Manhattan Beach Unified School District, I did not make a commencement speech during our high school graduation. I was honored and grateful when Mira Costa principal asked me to make a speech at the end of my 11th and last year with MBUSD. I took the opportunity […]
May 10, 2020
Unconditional love. If I could give every person on this planet one gift, it would be the promise that throughout your life, you will be loved, unconditionally. Such a love gives one strength and perseverance. It does not guarantee success, as that depends on our own efforts, our decisions, some luck, and a million other […]
April 25, 2020
It may have been the most thoughtless senior prank I ever experienced. As a former high school principal, I don’t love senior pranks. Usually, very little thought goes into them, and they end up being destructive, damaging, or time consuming. Occasionally though — and I mean very occasionally — a group of seniors pulls off […]
April 18, 2020
“I have raised an illiterate son.” Those were the words my dad spoke to me as a 17-year-old, as I was filling out my Harvard application. Harvard required that we list all the books we had read during high school, and left plenty of room on the paper application to fill in lots and lots […]
April 10, 2020
I’m a big fan of reading. But I have found that reading various news feeds on my iPad, computer or iPhone, while informative, does absolutely nothing to calm my soul. In fact, as I get pulled into the various rabbit holes courtesy of social media, I find myself actually feeling more stress – it’s not […]
April 7, 2020
I did not have any counselors in my high school. We had an English teacher, Mr. Bersey, who offered to help students in the college application process, but that was about it. Overnight, he went from being my sophomore year English teacher who taught me words like zephyr and zenith and who also gave me […]
March 30, 2020
“I haven’t been bored once. Not one bit.” That’s what my 17-year-old high school junior son Dawson told Jill and me after two weeks of isolation. I believe him. He has been training for this scenario for years. He certainly likes the outdoors. He’s OK with hiking, enjoys playing golf (he breaks 100 and has […]
March 28, 2020
People are seeking to know the expectations and objectives this new distance learning paradigm. I drafted a set of objectives for our district, then received feedback from a number of teachers and instructional leaders, and together we have developed version one of the MBUSD Objectives for Distance Learning.
March 23, 2020
As I have made these COVID-19 posts on Facebook, and I as tentatively enter the world of “social distance media,” I have heard from so many people from different chapters of my life. I have been fortunate in my 58 years of existence to have been a member of many amazing and magical teams. Sometimes […]
March 20, 2020
March 19, 2020 Today was Day Four of online schooling in MBUSD. Yesterday, I sent out an email to our entire MBUSD community with an update. I praised our teachers and staff who are learning on the fly, acknowledged that parents have it pretty rough these days with their new world (though there is some […]
March 18, 2020
March 17, 2020 Last week was one of the craziest weeks I’ve had as an educator and perhaps as a human being. Whether or not to close schools was a huge debate for our area and for the country. Many parents and medical professionals were saying that the sooner all schools closed, the more quickly […]
March 22, 2019
When I was a high school principal, a parent of a senior came up to me and asked, “Did you really tell my son he should turn down his college admission offers and go be a professional musician instead?” I smiled and said that yes, that was my advice to him. She shook her head […]
January 10, 2019
BCHD sat down with the heads of the three Beach Cities school districts to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing students today – and how they are tackling it all together. There’s so much happening in our schools and the lives of today’s students – from stressful academic demands to social-emotional well-being. So, we thought […]
June 14, 2018
Congratulations to the MBMS 8th Grade Class of 2018. Your class has chosen the theme, “Reach for the Stars” for this ceremony. And why not? It’s way better than themes that Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh might have chosen: What’s the use? I shouldn’t even try. Nothing’s going to change. Reach for the Stars is […]
May 24, 2018
I had the honor of attending an amazing event in our community today. Beach Cities Health District sponsored a Summit on Youth Stress and Substance Abuse. This is a huge issue for our community, for the communities of the Consortium 2030 group, and for the nation as a whole. We heard from 12 students in […]
September 16, 2017
When the last transmission for the International Space Station ended, the crowd in the middle school auditorium cheered wildly. The applause went on for over three minutes – more than 500 people swept up in the tremendous emotion of the moment. There were students, parents, and educators in the room, and every one of them […]
April 20, 2017
Back in 2015, I wrote a blog entry on AP classes. This entry is an update to that post. In the last two years, we have ramped up our focus on student stress here in MBUSD, and we are not alone. We have joined other districts with a similar interest through Stanford’s Challenge Success initiative. […]
March 31, 2017
March 31, 2017 I have written to you several times this year about our progress towards our Board goal of creating a culture of inclusion in our school district. I have witnessed powerful events in our schools, led by students, parents, and employees, that celebrated inclusion and discussed its importance in our community. Some of those […]
January 27, 2017
Students in Manhattan Beach are some of the highest achieving students in the nation. They graduate at an extraordinarily high rate and go to fantastic colleges and/or careers around the nation. But we have seen warning signs that indicate stress levels are higher than ever before. MBUSD is a proud member of the 21st Century […]