Donald Gately Ed.D.
Category Archives: Random Thoughts
My COVID-19 Diary: Friday un-Focused #7
You learn quickly when you’re an educator that kids think you’re old. I was 23 when I first started teaching, I thought I was pretty young, cool even. To my students, I may as well have been Methuselah. Continue reading
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My COVID-19 Diary: Writing. What works for me.
Avoid letting other tasks infringe upon them. If you’ve got kids, and writing takes place best when they are napping, do that. It’s unfortunate that the same machine that I use to write is also capable of delivering Twitter, Facebook, and Voxer. Continue reading
My COVID-19 Diary: Why write?
If I have to give myself a grade for my performance during the quarantine, and why not, everyone seems to be grading themselves during this time, I’d score myself a fairly generous “C+”. But one thing I have managed to do is publish a blog post every day during the quarantine. I’m happy to have done so for a variety of reasons. Continue reading
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My COVID-19: Friday un-Focused #6
We all have shining moments in our day. I love the notifications I get from Waze telling me how long it will take me to get to my next meeting if I leave the house now. “Scheduling meeting with Chad – Light Traffic – Leave now to be there in 27 minutes.” During quarantine, I arrive at this meeting sitting at my dining room table via Google Meet in 27 seconds. Continue reading
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My COVID-19 Diary: Is it a snow day? “I don’t know”
Even before social media, a rumor like this would travel around my school in about eight minutes. You’d hear a collective cheer raised by the entire student body. But this doesn’t happen because I possess years of experience with “Snow Day Stone Face.” I really should play more poker, but I don’t allow gambling in the lunchroom. Continue reading
My COVID-19 Diary: Who are you “at home”
Some of us, working from home, with our families within arms reach, are now both our professional and personal selves under the same roof. Families are confronting the work lives of their spouses, dads, moms for the first time. The reverse is also true, many overworked professionals, are presenting to their families some version of themselves 24/7, and hoping it works. What to do? Continue reading
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My COVID-19 Diary: I want to talk like that
Not the only, but one of the reasons we fixated on the nieces from Texas were their accents. They spoke with a deeply appealing southern drawl that was captivating to our ears. My friends and I were fascinated by their use of the “ah” sound in simple words like “faav” (five), “pah” (pie), and “naht” (night).Their way of speaking rendered the native diction of our East Flatbush neighborhood both crude and pedestrian. Continue reading
COVID-19 Diary: That’s how I talk
I recently asked my wife, born in Queens and raised on Long Island: “If we had moved out of state before the pandemic, would you watch the New York governor’s daily press conferences just to keep your NY accent in … Continue reading
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My COVID-19 Diary: Friday un-Focused #4
My first job in the morning is to locate a Jericho sweatshirt or a T-shirt to wear during the morning announcements with Chad. For Danielle, it’s hair and all the other things. I try to tell her she’s just as beautiful in an East Williston T-shirt, no blow-drying unnecessary. But she punches me in the arm really hard. Continue reading
My COVID-19 Diary: Things NOT done
Ten months ago I would’ve told you that by now I would have a physique like a guy doing life in a maximum-security prison.
Consider any movie in which Dwayne Johnson escapes from prison (most of them), he comes out ripped! Yet, something about the monotony of quarantine exacts a physical ennui that diffuses any drive I thought I would have under these conditions. Continue reading
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In the middle of learning - by Donald Gately Ed.D 
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