Author: Rob Plotkin

Next Fall, every school in the country will have small children smearing peanut sandwiches on their desks like it’s 1993! As Secretary of Education, I pledge to bring peanut butter back to school next Fall! But first, a little about me. I never envisioned a career in education. I was a content and well-paid small-claims lawyer, the kind that runs infomercials past midnight. But one day, my youngest son came home from school crying. His teacher had told him that he couldn’t eat his peanut butter sandwich. Apparently, his classroom was a peanut-free zone. As was the entire school cafeteria. The…

Subject: AI Policy Update Dear Colleagues, As we begin the new school year, I would like to address the elephant in the room. Every semester, the situation becomes increasingly dire for us English Language Arts teachers. It was just a few years ago that ChatGPT burst onto the scene, and suddenly, every other essay we saw began “taking a critical approach.” I’ll never forget that first year. Little Vanessa, the president of the steering committee, stood at my desk, and with quivering hands extended her essay: A “critical examination” that used “a comparative approach to explore the intersection between friendship,…

Bangor, ME.  Last weekend, birders from every corner of the nation descended on Bangor (population 32,446) to become a part of the aviary event of the century. An estimated 10 million came by plane, train, and automobile, all of them desperate to see the yellow-headed blackbird that was first spotted in Bucksport, ME (population 4,494), this past Friday. By lunchtime, a video of the bird perched on the abandoned paper mill had gone viral. “As soon as I saw the clip, I shut down the schools and gave all municipal workers the day off. Around 3:00, it took flight and…