Brett Vogelsinger

February 19, 2021February 19, 2021Brett Vogelsinger

3 Keepers: Lessons I Hope to Keep From Hybrid Writing Instruction

After a few more deep breaths and some reflection, I’m ready to think about what I hope sticks from this time period we are all so eager to put behind us.

January 29, 2021January 30, 2021Brett Vogelsinger

Designing With Grammar

Teaching grammar is my instructional nemesis. I’m sure I am not alone in feeling this way. For nearly twenty years now, I have worked at teaching grammar in the context of writing, without skill-and-drill worksheets, and every year I tweak my approach, often some variation of Harry Noden’s creative Image Grammar approach. But it’s still […]

December 18, 2020December 17, 2020Brett Vogelsinger

Thinking Smaller

I am proud that under normal circumstance I can choreograph a lot of “movement” into a single class period, but for this year, I am learning to embrace the fact that I cannot. I need smaller, simpler moves in a writing workshop that we can learn together and execute well. Otherwise, frustration will prevail.

November 20, 2020November 19, 2020Brett Vogelsinger

Welcoming Reflection

For many teachers, this fall has been a time of mourning. We mourn for the teaching strategies we can’t use right now, for the trickles of conversation before and after class that we used to enjoy with our students, for our feelings of self-efficacy in our chosen profession. Most of us are facing challenges that […]

October 23, 2020October 22, 2020Brett Vogelsinger

In Defense of Paper

And these days, when my students’ physical proximity to each other and their teachers is more tightly controlled, I can still provide a space for physical proximity to their ideas: the ink and paper and smeary graphite, the texture of it all.

September 18, 2020September 13, 2020Brett Vogelsinger

On the Lookout For Happy Accidents

My greatest hope is that amid this newness, the “I-feel-like-a-first-year-teacher-again” of it all, we can all learn some things about teaching writing that we may never have otherwise explored.

June 16, 2020June 16, 2020Brett Vogelsinger

Surprise and Emergence

In our writing classrooms, 2020 has been a year full of surprise. In Pennsylvania, we had a warm, nearly snowless winter and sudden, snappy late frosts in in the spring, so it’s been a year of surprises in the garden just outside my back door as well. Recently, I started taking some photos of striking […]

May 11, 2020May 8, 2020Brett Vogelsinger

Poetry as An Act of Revision

One key idea threads through my series this year about poetry as part of the writing process for other genres: poetry sharpens our diction. Frequent practice in reading and writing poetry tunes our eyes and ears to what works and does not work in our choice of words, the same way practicing guitar helps train […]

April 13, 2020April 10, 2020Brett Vogelsinger

A Collaborative Poem for An Isolating Pause

The good news is that words bind us together and can help us to create collaboratively with our students even as we all adjust to our new, socially distant ways.

March 16, 2020March 10, 2020Brett Vogelsinger

Extended Poetry to Develop Drafting Stamina

Writing poetry is a rite of passage for many teens. Some discover it on their own, crafting lyrics or daily musings in dog-eared notebooks. Some discover it in English class when a teacher invites them to write beside the beautiful words of published poets. This year, when we returned from winter break to start 2020 […]