I went to Waterford High School, where I think I was lucky to have a number of really good teachers.  One of my favorites was my junior year English teacher, Gail Dimaggio.  She set up classes like Socratic seminars and asked us to think about what we were reading.  It’s hard to teach someone to think, but that typically seemed to be her goal.  One of her regular reminders was to “just get started.” 

She told us that starting is always the hardest part, but once you start to write a paper the doing gets easier.  Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were wrong.  It’s not the waiting that’s the hardest part.  It’s the starting.  Mrs. Dimaggio was right.  There are […]