Peter Kravitz is the author of So You Wanna Be a Teacher, a former Philadelphia reporter and retired New York public high school Journalism teacher. He's a regular contributor to Silver Sage Magazine.
The Open by Peter Kravitz This year, for its 150th anniversary, The Open Championship golf tournament (known in the U.S. as “The British Open”) will again be played at the Old Course in St. Andrew’s, Scotland, July 14–17. Seven years ago, Tom Watson, then sixty-five, played his final Open round at St. Andrew’s, and I Read more
Going Under the Knife for Back Pain? by Peter Kravitz The sudden onset of severe back pain stunned me a year ago. I’d never had back pain before and was uncertain what to do. The pain stabbed my lower back as I walked and stood, although, surprisingly, skating and swinging a golf club were pain-free. Read more
Chapter 3: Brooklyn August 1988 by Peter Kravitz I picked up a map of New York City High Schools at the Board of Education on Court Street, near my wife’s and my first Carroll Gardens apartment, a third-floor walkup on Second Place. I planned to pedal my Raleigh three-speed—my childhood bicycle—to various Brooklyn High Schools Read more
Vaxxed Up & On the Road Again by Peter Kravitz For the first time in 403 days, I was able to travel. Fully vaccinated, I flew to Colorado in late March. I felt safe thanks to the miraculous Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but I nonetheless took the usual precautions on the Southwest Airlines flight—I wore a mask Read more
Bored in Retirement? No Way! by Peter Kravitz For the first time in 32 years, my September and October weren’t defined by grading essays, planning lessons, waking up at 5 a.m., and then elbowing a tattooed social studies teacher away from the copy machine for that last-minute idea for my first-period class. I’m still writing Read more
Back to Coaching by Peter Kravitz After a 22-year hiatus I have returned to coaching wrestling—like a real-life T. S. Garp. Wrestling has been important in my life. It instantly transformed me from a pudgy teen into a lean one. My suburban 1970s youth was too comfortable. Not eating or drinking anything for 36 hours Read more
Tony Taylor: One of the Finest Human Beings on the Planet by Peter Kravitz Philadelphia sports fans are renowned for booing. But they never booed Tony Taylor. The fans always cheered him, especially on each of the three Tony Taylor Days—in 1963, 1970, and in 1975. Has anyone else been honored by his team so Read more
Corona by Peter Kravitz Saturday morning. Once a reprieve from the exhaustion of a long-work week, it now dawns as just another day infecting our minds with reports of new cases and deaths caused by the coronavirus. Before making coffee, I check the Target website hoping to find Purell at one of the 10 stores Read more
Ms. Pac-Man: A Love Story by Peter Kravitz On my second date with Jennifer, in 1982, I defeated her in the arcade game Ms. Pac-Man. “That wasn’t fair,” she said. “Why?” I asked. “You practiced.” On our first date she had dexterously worked the lever and avoided the little monsters that gobble you up, leading Read more
Sans the Selfies by Peter Kravitz At Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve in Colorado and Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument in New Mexico you can shoot a million photos, but none can truly capture the full grandeur of the southern Rockies, especially with an iPhone 7. The dunes, the tallest in North America, Read more
