I’m no longer ashamed to admit that I own and wear Christmas Pants, and I think you should too. My understanding of how to celebrate the Christmas season has changed recently, and I’ve had to rethink how I comport myself and how I manage my classroom in December. Do you own a pair of Christmas Pants?


As a physics teacher, I get to play with toys as part of my job. Physics labs give me the chance to dig out classic favorites such as Slinkys and Hot Wheels cars and put them to educational use. Occasionally I get catalogs from laboratory equipment manufacturers full of strange and sterile contraptions, but I find that students learn better when they personally connect the lessons to familiar things, and the more nostalgic the better. And so, where I am able, I make the childhood playground my laboratory.

Somewhere in a musty old box there is a photograph of me that makes me laugh every time I see it.