back-to-school

Where Real Kids and Real Teachers Can Only Dream of Real Education

Jerald Isseks · 09/28/13 01:08PM

A. At a conference called "Making Language Arts More Relevant," I sit listening to the keynote speaker talk to us about how high school graduates don’t know how to capitalize the first words of sentences. This woman is the director of human resources at a cybersecurity firm located near the high school where I teach. She is talking to us about what successful job candidates’ reading and writing looks like. We sit at our tables, listening.

Back to School: Lunch Is a Problem That Comes Every Day

Tom Scocca · 09/13/13 02:11PM

When you have children of your own, you realize for the first time what your own parents went through, things you couldn't possibly have understood when you were a child—and really are better off not having understood, because the knowledge would have been debilitating. There's the abyssal terror at having brought a fragile, trusting life into a world of hurtfulness and destruction, for instance. Not far behind that is the problem of packing lunch.

Back To School: How To Delicately Deal With Bad Teachers

Ken Layne · 09/11/13 05:30PM

Did you recently send your younglings off to school? Congratulations on another milestone on the road to college debt! But during these first weeks of the new school year, you may have to answer a few uncomfortable questions about the various teachers, administrators, "lunch ladies," or P.E. instructors who did something idiotic or insane, already.

Back to School, You Lazy Whelps, Ha Ha, Sucks for You

Hamilton Nolan · 08/20/12 08:48AM

It's half-past August, and you know what that means in No Child Left Behind the 7-11 Without Some Book-Learnin' America: it's time for your unruly, ungrateful, and uncomprehending children to put down their childish toys of summers and return to the cold, gleaming socialization boxes in which we warehouse them virtually year-round, for the good of everyone.

Jennie Garth Too 'Bummed' About Tori's Salary Woes To Actually Call Her

Kyle Buchanan · 08/12/08 05:15PM

The backstage drama behind the CW's 90210 reboot is quickly providing its very own season arcs — and all this before the teen soap has even aired! When last we swung by the refurbished Peach Pit, Tori Spelling was bailing on the redo after learning that other original cast members Jennie Garth and Shannen Doherty would be receiving more money. Appraised of the issue, Garth quickly called up EW to give her side of the story:

'Party On Fountain' Is The Best Wesleyan Joke Rap Song You've Never Heard

Emily Gould · 09/24/07 04:30PM

Alumni of America's Most Annoying Liberal Arts College were all abuzz last week about this song "Party On Fountain." Composed by Molly Gaebe '07, Mary Campion '07, Pat Wolf '07, Kate Heller '09 and Ted Feldman '09, who are collectively known as New Teen Force, the song is about partying at different places on the Wes campus, like: "Party in the Bayit, Shabbat Shalom!" Sounds hilarious, right? Too bad you can't listen to it!

The N.Y.U. Swarm Is Changing Our City's Aural Landscape

Emily Gould · 08/30/07 09:58AM

From the mailbag, a Facebook-loving reader sends this screenshot and writes: "One of these things is not like the others... do you think there's any correlation between #4 and N.Y.U. being back in session?" Yes.

The NYU Swarm Is Upon Us

Emily Gould · 08/24/07 12:00PM

Hey, have you tried to walk down Third Avenue above St. Mark's lately? I say "tried to" because it is almost impossible. The strip is swarmed with seventeen year olds, walking six abreast on the sidewalk and talking very loudly about, usually, Facebook or dialectical materialism. Or, if it's late at night, being comically caricature-of-drunk. Or, if it's early in the day, walking a few steps ahead of their parents who are carrying their boxes, as if this will trick passerby into thinking that they and the older people who look just like them are unrelated strangers. Like the first rubescent leaves in Tompkins Square Park, the NYU hordes are an early harbinger of Fall in the East Village. Unlike the leaves, however, they are so fucking annoying.