Larry Strauss
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About Larry Strauss
A former subway graffiti artist, stand-up comic, television writer, ghost writer, and corporate poet, Larry Strauss writes the kind of fiction he likes to read: funny, surprising, insightful, and poignant. He teaches high school English and coaches basketball in South Central Los Angeles, and tries to recruit kids out of materialism, violence and despair and into the world of ideas. Strauss grew up on the Upper Westside of Manhattan, then attended high school and college in Los Angeles. He wrote for television in his twenties, including three episodes of the first season of Transformers, then ghost-wrote and co-authored books with a doctor, nutritionist, financial planner, and two psychologists. He also wrote The Magic Man, a biography of Magic Johnson for the mid-grade audience. His first three novels, Fake Out, One Man One Vote, and Unfinished Business were published by Holloway House Books, now a subsidiary of Kennsington. His fourth novel, Now's the Time, was published by Kearney Street Books. Strauss lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Eleanor, and their son. See more about him @ Larrystrauss.net
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Blog postWe aren't just striking for pay. We're striking for the future.
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Blog postAn indifferent world cares little about the hard work of impoverished young people.
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Blog postIf we object to police abuse, can we not also support the police who work hard and risk their lives? Of course we can.
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Blog postWhen I began writing my last novel — about a young woman playing trumpet in the male-dominated world of jazz — I wondered
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Blog postI still remember the excitement in our building when the district and the corporations first rolled them out.
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Blog postTwo of my former students demonstrate the consequences of zero-tolerance discipline policies.
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Blog postIf you are knowingly hurting children, there is something wrong with you, whether or not you have the law on your side.
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Blog postAside from her woeful lack of qualifications to run the United States Department of Education, Betsy DeVos is an advocate
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Blog postI want the president to stand up to those who wish to harm us. But this does not accomplish that.
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Blog postBill O'Reilly has every right to say that some kids are just bad apples, out of control, and should be carted off by constables. But educators have got be committed to proving him wrong.
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Blog postWe are angry. A lot of people are angry. But the anger is a symptom. A symptom of something larger. A symptom of an education system for which no one feels accountable, a symptom of a society that is mostly indifferent to the children we serve.
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Blog postGone are the days of President Reagan's ketchup as a vegetable. And it is about time the feds try to do something to combat childhood obesity and promote healthy eating habits. Problem is, a lot of students aren't eating any of it.
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Blog postWhile I've been a true believer and I've perpetuated the belief in hard work as the great poverty buster, now when I talk to some of them I feel that I've perpetuated a great fraud upon them.
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Blog postShould we -- teachers, that is -- be fighting to maintain job protections for our colleagues whose incompetence is at best negligent and at worst abusive? How about we concede a baseline of quality in each classroom?
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Blog postGun control. Self-control. Lack of parental control. There is a lot to say about senseless killing -- and there is very little other kind of killing on the streets of South Los Angeles and many other communities.
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Blog postHow do we teach creativity, innovation, collaboration, and intellectual empowerment to our students in a system that is oppressive, repressive, based on mistrust and fear?
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Blog postShould there even be high school football? Just asking that question is probably an affront to players and their fans at every level. But I'm asking because the question needs to be asked. Because don't we put student safety above all else?
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Blog postMeasuring student learning isn't like measuring the vacancy rate of a motel -- or the gross sales of a retailer or productivity in a factory. In education, the infatuation with data tends to produce expedient and pedantic solutions to often complex challenges.
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Blog postWhatever the verdict and however any of us feel about it, this incident is a symptom of a sickness of which we are all a part.
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Blog postThere is an epidemic in my city and probably yours too -- and I'm not too sure that the common core or any other standards are going to help: there are too many children out of school not doing much.
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Blog postIn the mid-1990s, the school district I work for informed all the high schools that they were no longer allowed to teach basic math. Math teachers who challenged the ruling were told that they were expressing a racist point of view.
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Blog postMost of us -- parents, that is -- couldn't stay home with our children if we wanted to, and many don't want to and probably shouldn't.
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Blog postWhen I return to work on January 7, students and I will debate the viability of gun control. Invariably, one of them will ask me whether I believe teachers should -- as some politicians are now suggesting -- be allowed or required to carry guns while they teach.
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Blog postDesigning lessons around Thanksgiving, at least in inner-city L.A. where I teach, has for a while been out of fashion. But if the point of this holiday is to be thankful, and to maybe reach out to others in some way, then maybe such lessons ought not be considered trite.
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Blog postThe people who run failing schools act as if they have a data problem -- not an education problem -- and it is the data problem they set out to repair. The system has disregarded -- or forgotten -- its purpose.
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Blog postI remember when I thought that students were the great impediment to learning. But I don't believe that anymore. I've seen too many students overcome all those things.
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Blog postIt is election time again and as many of us use the moment in the teaching of government, political science, rhetoric, and history I hope we all remember what it means to be a teacher.
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Blog postWe tell these children to speak up and ask questions -- but what if a teacher's answers contain a dizzying dose of sulfur? You want higher standards for teachers -- how about starting with our breath?
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Blog postI remember thinking I was immune from obsolescence because I'm a teacher and children will always need teaching and a machine cannot do most of what we do. I still believe that, though I wonder now if I'm not living in a false sense of security.
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Blog postWe are not amused by a school district that has squandered billions of dollars over the years. We are not amused by the education testing industry that keeps sucking dollars out of our schools and leaving us with less and less.
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Blog postThis time of year, I always get asked to give students a D instead of an F. "He already got into college! What a shame if he couldn't go," I'm told. Yes, but it's also a shame if he goes and doesn't succeed because we never held him accountable.
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Blog post"Please do your best," I say. "Please don't make me look bad." That one is their favorite -- and why shouldn't it be? It empowers them as do few aspects of their education.
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Blog postWhat ought to be clear to all of us by now is that the institutional structure of schools and school systems is ill-conceived. It is a failure. And this failure is at the root of all other educational failures.
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Blog postWe cannot begin to fix our education system until we get everyone in power to recognize the falseness of the military-corporate-education analogy, until we accept the absolute stupidity of executive-ruled schools.
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Blog postIf the truth about who we are and what we've done makes people angry, do we really soothe that anger by covering up the truth?
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Blog postI work in a school district that has been shamed by sexual predators posing as teachers and the cumulative failures to prevent or stop them.
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Blog postAnyone who ever finds him or herself asking teachers to do anything other than teach students ought to do so with a healthy dose of skepticism.
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Blog postA former student of mine, now a police officer and a volunteer assistant basketball coach, disappeared a few seasons ago for several months. He was assigned suddenly by narcotics to go undercover in a local high school.
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Blog postThe lockdown model of education with oppressive rules and blindly inflexible enforcement is a failure. Let's find a way to replace punishment with inspiration, dispassionate control with tough love.
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Blog postSometimes my students ask me why I became a teacher. No simple answer. It was a combination of things, probably starting when, though I am three-and-a-half years younger than my brother, I became the older brother.
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Blog postFifty years ago, I watched my parents try to help my developmentally disabled brother. They were told multiple times to dispose of their defective child in an institution. I'm not sure how much less agonizing it is today.
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Blog postI'm pretty sure that if students at a suburban high school ever found themselves in the kind of danger in which South L.A. students routinely find themselves some state of emergency would be declared.
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Blog postClass size matters, and it matters for all of us, except, perhaps for the very least effective teachers, those who are either completely incompetent or who have cynically stopped trying.
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Blog postWith college applications due, my seniors are asking for help with their personal statements and I am finding out the depths of what they have endured. It's sad and sometimes, even after 20 years, shocking.
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Blog postSome days when I actually spend most of my day teaching composition and reading, I think about what a luxury it is for a teacher to be able to do that. Because so much of what we do isn't exactly teaching.
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Blog postOur students just filled up our classrooms for the first time last week and pretty soon the I'll be compelled to assign a letter grade to each of them on a progress report.
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Blog postThere is an obvious solution to the lagging academic performance of U.S. students: Increase the teacher work day. To 24 hours.
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Blog postIf we believe in the ideal of a meritocracy how can we support a system that favors birth rite over achievement?
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Blog postMore serious than the unfolding cheating scandal in Atlanta public schools are wasted instructional hours -- millions of them if we add them up for each student -- including all the squandered time associated with the testing itself.
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Books By Larry Strauss
The Facts of My Life
Nov 1, 2015
$9.95$995
$0.00 Free with Audible trial
$30.13$3013
$34.95
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$14.00
(31 Used & New offers)
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Paperback
$4.99$499
$20.00$2000
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$4.70
(31 Used & New offers)
$52.94$5294
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$27.65
(7 Used & New offers)
Now's the Time
Aug 10, 2010
$9.95$995
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$14.42$1442
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Only 1 left in stock (more on the way).
Only 1 left in stock (more on the way).
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$5.25
(16 Used & New offers)
How to Reach Your Favorite Sports Star (v. 1)
Feb 1, 1995
$3.99$399
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
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$1.99
(17 Used & New offers)
$16.91$1691
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$16.91
(13 Used & New offers)
$3.75$375
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$3.75
(7 Used & New offers)
The Magic Man
Apr 1, 1992
$2.95$295
$3.95
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
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$0.98
(10 Used & New offers)
When You Have Chest Pains: A Guide to Cardiac and Noncardiac Causes and What You Can Do About Them
Apr 1, 1989
$1.95$195
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$1.95
(5 Used & New offers)
$15.34$1534
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$2.97
(31 Used & New offers)
One Man, One Vote
Feb 1, 2008
$5.40$540
$12.95
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Only 1 left in stock (more on the way).
Only 1 left in stock (more on the way).
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$4.76
(6 Used & New offers)
Unfinished Business
Feb 1, 2008
$12.95$1295
Usually ships within 1 to 3 months.
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$7.42
(12 Used & New offers)
Fake Out
Feb 1, 2008
$4.95$495
Usually ships within 1 to 3 months.
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$4.75
(8 Used & New offers)
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