Teacher Tails - Karrer Shorts

Send us Fan Mail Some 5th grade girls beg their teacher to come in class during his lunch break. Teacher practices his fiddle. -  WARNING!! THERE IS A SUPER BRIEF WRETCHEDLY HORRIBLE RENDITION OF "ANGELINE THE BAKER" But suffer a bit and listen to commentary. Cute Support the show

Send us Fan Mail A Peace Corps teacher of science learns many things in South Pacific's Samoa - like Pigs DO fly. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail On a packed bus in Korea my wife is robbed of her ancient Rolex while I'm with her. The passengers insist on all of us going in the bus to the police station. Police inform us we were hit by a well-known bump and push gang . Unbelievable ending ...  Support the show

Send us Fan Mail After a lesson on the origins of MLK Junior Day, a 5th grader asks, "Teacher were YOU a racist?"  The teacher rethinks his knee-jerk reaction and admits yes. But there's even more to this story... Support the show

Send us Fan Mail  A Peace Corps volunteer in Samoa but from Texas looooves his boots. But how long can leather boots last in the jungle? Support the show

Send us Fan Mail One teacher has ZERO bathroom problems with his 2nd graders. WHY? A principal finds the reason. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail A Peace Corps Volunteer (me) completes his 2 years in Samoa. He goes to New Zealand and wonders will he fit in to normal society again. Will people be decent? He has a heart-warming and humanity at its best experience. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail Korean story I had published in San Francisco Chronicle. A friend explains how her best friend in high school lived in a quarantined city of lepers Sang Dong - because both her parents had the disease. Heart-warming story about friendship, special shoes with a happy ending Support the show

Send us Fan Mail A former student incarcerated at age 13 describes a typical day in Corcoran Prison. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail A teacher tells how he dealt with his 5th-grade class lock down after hearing a gun shot and seeing a police officer crawl beneath his class window with a drawn gun. Happy ending... fortunately. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail Two guys take a hike across a reservoir in  Connecticut. The ice has a surprise for them. Also the story is a metaphor for one of the guys, who unfortunately like the ice, has become less and less solid over time. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail A teacher deals with  series of events at the same time. A child has stapled her thumb. A child outside is dancing in a puddle. Some parents think they have a conference NOW! Support the show

Send us Fan Mail A Connecticut Yankee teaching English in Korea delivers three orphans to their new families in New York on Christmas Eve. But one of the infants has massive disabilities. What is going on?  Do the new parents know? Support the show

Send us Fan Mail A wonderfully resilient 5th grader deals with her mom's death in a heartwarming and magnificent way. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail A woman in a store accuses me of being a racist after I address her and the child with her (she's Anglo) in English and then Spanish.  My small Frenchie wanted to say hi to them and I wanted them to feel at ease. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail A 5th-grader confesses she detests singing. The why is heart-breaking. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail An ill 2nd grader escapes to school. He doesn't want to miss class. The teacher told them finish school...go to college.  Years later teacher and student meet. What happened to the kiddo? Support the show

Send us Fan Mail During a week at science camp a teacher gains some insights as to why a particularly troublesome child has issues. And why his favorite thing in the world is hot showers Support the show

Send us Fan Mail This opinion piece was originally published in The Monterey Herald. Nothing came of it. Then I offered it to Education Week. They published it and it went VIRAL. 16 Google search pages connected the letter to the world. It was published in Chinese and Hebrew even.  CNN called me at school to do another opinion piece - see what happened with that at the end of the reading. Support...

Send us Fan Mail The author (me) rebukes and then rebuts a statement by New York Times & NPR Op-editor David Brooks. He stated, "A major impediment to education reform is the teachers' unions."    I detail what is education reform? What has it done so far? (Public education destruction.) Support the show

Send us Fan Mail A 3rd grade teacher tries to explain what Thanksgiving is all about but makes a linguistic blunder which horrifies her class. The kids are "Newcomers" migrants from all over Mexico. Some do not even speak Spanish. For many their primary languages are -  Nahuatl, Mixtec, or  Maya Support the show

Send us Fan Mail A retired teacher (me) is asked by a former student to go pig hunting. The former student is in his 30's now. I go and hope I'm not a moron. But I am.  However, all pigs lived for another day. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail I interview a former student,  D.J.  Corbett, who volunteered at the Polish-Ukrainian border for 6 weeks. He snuck into Ukraine briefly with a supply of donated basic goods he bought. Homeland Security in USA pulled him aside and gave him some strongly worded suggestions. Lots of heart-wrenching incidents and a few heart warming ones.  D.J. connected with some Polish riot police a...

Send us Fan Mail This article was published in Critical Read. The editors wanted an art creation based on a piece in a museum. So I carved a chess set from deer antler and related it to the most famous of all chess sets - The Lewis Chess set.  (Pieces are displayed both in England and Scotland) I tell how my Frenchie Winnie inspired the set as she loooooved to chew deer antler. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail My siblings and I contacted a legal firm after seeing a class action suit advertisement. We were hosed.  I tie in the annihilation of three Roman legions in 9 A.D. by Germanic tribes due in no small part to mistreatment by Roman lawyers.  I end with a  lawyer friend's humorous non-fiction tale of his nakedness and a burglar. Guess who got screwed! Support the show