I practiced with Whitney ahead of time, so when the Dukes of Distinction presentation started Thursday night, we knew exactly what to do: follow fellow distinguished alum Dr. Robert Chen (“I go by Bob, he said when we were introduced) down the red carpet, stop when Bob stops, and pivot 90 degrees to the left […]

I have a children’s book published, but here’s a confession: I don’t know a whole lot about children’s literature. Not modern children’s literature, at least. I read a ton of books when I was little, but after I traded my children’s library card for one that got me into the adult section of the Elmhurst […]

It’s “Disability Awareness Week” at Wilmot Elementary School in Deerfield, Illinois, and the kids there had already enjoyed a special guest before I showed up there with Whitney yesterday. Melissa Stockwell, a three-time Paratriathlon World Champion and decorated U.S. Army veteran, had been at Wilmot the day before us. Melissa was serving in Baghdad in 2004 when a roadside bomb […]

Back in 2010 I wrote a blog post about a visit to Fairview Elementary School in a Chicago suburb called Mt. Prospect. A first-grader there asked one of my all-time favorite questions: “How do you know if you picked a four-leaf clover?” That little girl must be in fifth grade now, and I’m hoping she […]

Yesterday Whitney and I enjoyed a magical morning in a classroom in one of the most impoverished neighborhoods of Chicago’s South Side: the Auburn-Gresham neighborhood. Fourth, fifth and sixth graders in a Montessori program at Oglesby Elementary are writing essays for a book they’ll publish in November, and their teacher asked me to come talk about memoir-writing. […]