Recently, one of my stepsons was home from college for a weekend and Harry Chapin’s “Cats in the Cradle” came on the Pandora station we were listening to. We started talking about relationships between fathers and sons, about how fortunate my stepsons have been to have their father in their lives and how that is not always the case. All of a sudden I flashed back to music Fridays in Mr. Rice’s seventh grade English class when we dissected the song, as well as on another Friday, when “Father & Son” by Cat Stevens was the focus. Mr. Rice offered thirsty students not only a framework for analytical thinking but…

It’s been 22 years since I sat in his classroom, but the impact that Jack Rice had on my life transcends time and space. His kind nature, his laid-back presence, his willingness to take that extra moment for each student. These are the reasons that any person who ever stepped foot in his classroom was one of the luckiest. In the opening of each “Twilight Zone”, Rod Serling exclaims “A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination.” That is what each day in one of Mr. Rice’s classes were; A journey into the imagination. There was no such thing as a stupid idea, or a comment…