English Language Arts High School #alted #writer #amwriting, posts are my own.
Joined June 2015
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Aaron DeLay retweeted
Wisdom from my six-year-old: WHY IS IT CALLED A GRAPEFRUIT? THIS IS TOO BIG TO BE A GRAPE AND IT DOESN'T TASTE LIKE FRUIT. I WON'T CALL IT A GRAPEFRUIT IT'S A BIG NASTY ORANGE!
Aaron DeLay retweeted
Walter Koenig lived long. He prospered. Thank you, sir, for the joy that you added to my life and the lives of so many others.
Aaron DeLay retweeted
I face more ideological resistance from students today than I did 10 years ago.
Here's what I mean.
Yesterday, I had a group of 14-year-olds argue with me about capitalization.
Many of them rarely use capital letters correctly in their writing, and they genuinely believe capitalization is unnecessary, or even "dumb."
When I told them that I take points off for ignoring capitalization, they insisted it was unfair.
Ten years ago, I almost never had conversations like this.
Students might have forgotten the rules. They might have been careless. But they rarely argued that the rules themselves didn't matter.
Aaron DeLay retweeted
Il Papa: "È impossibile considerare normale togliere la vita. Ciò che è legale non è necessariamente morale!"
"So che per alcuni di voi, a causa di particolari patologie e di dolori talvolta terribili, l’orizzonte può apparire cupo, incerto, senza via d’uscita. Ma nessuna legge umana deve farvi perdere la certezza della vostra dignità. Al contrario, è proprio in nome di questa dignità inalienabile della persona umana che la tentazione di togliere la vita con il pretesto di una falsa compassione deve essere fermamente respinta. È impossibile considerare normale togliere la vita. Ciò che è legale non è necessariamente morale"
Aaron DeLay retweeted
On a night walk with the dog and bunch of 90s songs came up on my playlist and brought me back to the time when the internet was brand new, novel and amazing. Now it is so surreal now to read news about the dangers of AI on a hand-held device that connects with anybody instantly. What a time it has been.
Aaron DeLay retweeted
This is very hard to read, and you should take some time to do just that.
Sharing a gift link to the New York Times' devastating minute by minute report of the World Trade Center's last 102 minutes, based on the hundreds of last calls and emails people made.
Never forget.
nytimes.com/2002/05/26/nyreg…
Aaron DeLay retweeted
It's important that we remember September 11, but even more important that we pass on those memories to kids so they can learn from them. youtu.be/6qVLDxT4wZY
Aaron DeLay retweeted
I sat through jury selection last fall and watched exactly this dynamic take shape before the trial even started. I raised a few pointed questions during voir dire and got sent home while people who couldn’t articulate a single coherent thought stayed in the room. I left wondering how anyone gets a fair trial from a process that seems to filter out anyone who thinks.
This list reads like the reason why. A jury needs people who can hold multiple pieces of evidence in their head at once and reason through contradictions. If the room is full of people who either shut down at the first sign of disagreement or can’t parse a written instruction, the verdict was never really in doubt.
Also, the comments here are spot on.
The jury that I recently served on was hung because:
1. Three jurors refused to discuss the evidence with an open mind. At the start of deliberations, they declared: “I will never change my mind on this. You could never convince me otherwise.” They demanded a hung jury verdict in the first hour of deliberations - simply because our initial vote was split. That was a violation of jury instructions.
2. Very few of the jurors were able to take the entire case in context, and parse through all the testimonies and evidence to decipher what we believed was the truth. They wanted to pick 1 testimony as the perfect telling and did not know how to decide given discrepancies between them all.
3. Two jurors kept objecting to points of discussion because of “bias” that they claimed we were invoking into our deliberations. These jurors claimed that some of the evidence submitted during trial could not be considered by the jury because it would “trigger our biases.” They kept interjecting “that’s bias” or “you’re just biased” or “that’s your bias tainting the evidence.” Other jurors responded to this defensively and would back down at the accusations.
4. One juror in particular - totally woke - viewed the entire world as groups (oppressors) and individuals (victims) and so would not accept anything as true, right, or good that could come from the group (they were the accusers), and defaulted to the individual (the accused) as the only possible honest person. She refused to accept any testimony or evidence offered by the group, and became visibly shaken and angry if any other juror questioned the integrity or testimony of the accused - a testimony that was filled with errors and contradictions.
She was also very condescending to all others.
5. Multiple jurors declared it was “impossible to decide the facts of the case” because there was no video evidence. They lamented that we don’t have “surveillance like in the UK” in all public places, and as such it would be impossible to determine the facts of this case. If t hey could not see the events, they would not believe them.
6. Several jurors could not understand the written law, even after being provided explanations and instructions from the court. They simply could not comprehend. Not that they disagreed, but they could not understand.
7. Two jurors kept interrupting the process of discussion saying “you’re wasting our time” and they kept telling us they wanted to vote and go home and put this mess behind us.
Alas…a hung jury was the right outcome. Not because of the case, but because of the deficiency of the jury.
Aaron DeLay retweeted
Here is Rob Long's (@rcbl) beautiful, powerful, and necessary piece about Dolly Parton from 2020.
commentary.org/articles/rob-…
Aaron DeLay retweeted
I used to listen to “Hard Candy Christmas” and “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” during my hardest year. Took my kids to Dollywood when the world went haywire in 2020. Dolly was the one celeb, when my kids asked, I’d say I knew I’d be star struck by. Gonna be a long day for this mascara!
Aaron DeLay retweeted
She could be self-deprecating and spin a yarn with the best that ever were, whether in song or speech. She created more such storytellers we don't even know about yet, not just through her music, but through her Imagination Library. Both such monumental contributions, but built on something so simple and pure, as she'd remind us the best things are. Wow, will she be missed.
Aaron DeLay retweeted
I of course admired Dolly's music and business acumen. But she also lived with such obvious gratitude, fueled by faith. She came from nothing, but with no chip on her shoulder. Quite the opposite. You can look through the window of her one-bedroom childhood home on display at Dollywood while listening to "Coat of Many Colors" and know she was rich long before she was rich and she wanted everyone else to know it, too.
Aaron DeLay retweeted
PSA: I am not a parenting expert but I am pretty sure that the secret to raising happy children is to spend at least one night a week giggling while you threaten to eat each other's belly buttons.
Aaron DeLay retweeted
It's true. As I always say, the unexamined life is not worth living. Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. The coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco.
Aaron DeLay retweeted
Periodic reminder of Evelyn Waugh's Rules of Engagement for replying to fan letters (from a letter to Nancy Mitford).
Aaron DeLay retweeted
Tommy John, who won 288 games during a 26-year Major League career and became the first pitcher to make a successful return following groundbreaking elbow surgery that later was named after him, has died at 83. abcnews.link/81jb8V4
Aaron DeLay retweeted
I read a wonderful story where he showed up at some local TV station to do in-and-outros for a year’s worth of Saturday night horror movies
He was the biggest star by far anyone at the station had ever seen. They said he showed up with his driver. Sat down. Did 30 or so recordings flawlessly. Was polite, professional, finished his work, and left without a word with his driver.
Everyone was crushed. They wanted to meet him.
A few minutes later in walks Price and his driver carrying cases of beer and buckets of chicken.
He hung around for hours meeting everyone, signing autographs, and just being awesome.
One of the greats.
RT @jenteach13: You're not their friend. You're their anchor.
Every August, a new group of students walks into your classroom. Most of the…
Aaron DeLay retweeted
In 2003, the most hated team in the NBA did the kindest thing anyone has ever done on a basketball court.
April 25, 2003. Rose Garden, Portland. Game 3 of the first round against Dallas. The Blazers are down 2-0 and facing elimination from the moment they wake up.
That Blazers team had a nickname. The Jail Blazers.
They were, at the time, maybe the least likable team in professional sports. Arrests. Suspensions. A roster full of guys the national media treated as villains. Portland fans were exhausted by them.
Before the game, a 13 year old girl named Natalie Gilbert walks to center court to sing the national anthem in front of 19,980 people.
What nobody in the building knew is that she was sick. She had the flu. She later said she just didn't feel like herself at all that day.
She gets a few lines in.
And then her brain goes blank.
She sings "star's last gleaming" instead of "twilight's last gleaming," realizes it instantly, and stops. She looks around. She puts her hand to her face.
Thirteen years old. Twenty thousand people. National television. Frozen.
There is no worse feeling available to a human being.
And then a man walks out of the Portland huddle.
Maurice Cheeks, the head coach, minutes away from a playoff elimination game, leaves his team, walks across the floor, puts his arm around her shoulder and says, "C'mon."
Then he starts singing with her.
Now understand something. Maurice Cheeks cannot sing. At all. He is not remotely trying to rescue the performance.
He's just refusing to let a kid stand there alone.
He keeps his arm around her the whole way. He feeds her the next words. And within a few seconds, all 19,980 people in that building stand up and sing it with them.
A moment that was going to define a little girl's life in the worst possible way became the exact opposite.
Dan Patrick wrote at the time that Cheeks' simple actions had become the defining moment of the entire playoffs.
They went on Jay Leno together. CNN. Good Morning America. It became one of the first truly viral NBA moments, years before that word meant anything.
Portland lost the game. They lost the series. Cheeks finished his Blazers tenure with a fairly ordinary record and was eventually let go.
Now here's the ending.
In March 2025, almost 22 years later, Maurice Cheeks came back to Portland as an assistant coach with the New York Knicks.
The Blazers found Natalie Gilbert.
She's 35 now. Married. Goes by Natalie Zito. She's also, as it turns out, a Blazers season ticket holder.
They brought her back to sing the anthem again.
She nailed it. The whole building erupted. And the camera cut to Cheeks on the sideline, beaming like a proud father.
The two of them met before the game and hugged.
What she said afterward is why this story matters. She explained that she'd been made fun of a lot as a kid, and that in the moment she felt most helpless and hopeless, a stranger walked right over with no hesitation.
"This moment changed my life."
And then she said something even better. That she wouldn't go back and change any of it. That seeing him again and finding out he's still the same standup guy proved it was all real.
Twenty two years. One arm around a shoulder.
Follow @thesportsontap, we post a story like this every day.