“I don’t think you should be talking about this,” a ninth grader muttered under his breath as he gritted his teeth and sank a bit lower in his chair. No, this was not the response when I started a lesson about healthy relationships during our Catcher in the Rye study (everyone likes hearing their English […]
“How do you know what you’re going to do until you do it?” The Catcher in the Rye nearly concludes on that question as Holden Caulfield embarks on an uncertain, perhaps tentatively hopeful, future. In the classroom, we could adapt his question to ask: “How will we know how this turns out until we try […]
(See what I did there?) “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I […]
In his post yesterday, Jay mentioned how he is struggling to find the groove this year. And last week, Rebekah shared her eagerness to move out of survival mode toward outgrowing her best work. I hear that, Jay and Rebekah. On the one hand, my classes have finished our launch units, and students seem familiar […]
With one month left in the school year and just a few weeks remaining before my IB seniors take their exam, we are nearing the end of our independent studies, and I am excited by the results of this experiment! Earlier this week, students gathered in small discussion groups to talk about their independent study […]
Earlier this week, I stood next to one of my administrators atop the brick edges of a flowerbed for a better view of the beautiful chaos of a spring club fair. Students shouted and sang and waved neon posters back and forth, courting new members and future leaders; they were eager to refresh activities that […]
This school year, my beat has been all about reflection: I want to learn new strategies for prompting it and to help my students get better at writing it. Upon my own reflection, however, I know I coasted for most of my reflection quest in 2021. The spines of professional texts are barely cracked, and […]
Last month, I introduced two new means of reflection–a set of brainstorming questions inspired by Reading with Presence and a “poetry prescription” activity–that I hoped to implement in the weeks that followed. Today, I’m here with an update. Readers, they worked! The poem analysis letters inspired by The Paris Review’s “Poetry Rx” column were full […]
I often find myself telling students, particularly my seniors, that I am “throwing them into the deep end.” As the year begins, I may assign a task that’s beyond their skill or comfort to see how they perform. If things go awry, I try to figure out where the gaps are and fill them. As […]
Each spring, I use my discomfort with my school’s requisite summer reading assignment as a challenge: How can I make required reading work for my students and our wider community? How can I create some opportunities for student choice and voice that still allow some structure for evaluation? This year, I really thought I hit […]
moving writers 