Mentor Text: Leading Us To Revelation: On Rita Dove by Jericho Brown Techniques: Background – I’ve had a subscription to POETRY Magazine for a few years now. And I almost never finish an issue. Issues travel with me in my school bag. Issues are lugged to dance and swim practices in my satchel. Issues can usually […]
Mentor Text: The Empty Sentiment of The Last of Us by Jackson McHenry Techniques: Background – As a insomniac geek teacher who loves stories in pretty much any form, the combination of streaming services and the internet is a gift. There’s lots of stories to immerse myself in, and there’s lots of commentary on those stories. […]
Mentor Text: How a Poem Snapshots a Moment of Drama by Adam Sol Techniques: Background – I try to build little brain breaks for myself into the school day. That’s been vital these last couple especially challenging years. Access to a digital library has been incredibly helpful in this regard, as I don’t have to remember […]
(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 […]
Between this post and my last, a war began. And we shouldn’t be surprised. Like the rise of Nazi Germany after WWI, the conflict in Ukraine has been building for more than twenty years. Putin and his post-Soviet ancestors have been playing a game of Hungry Hippos with the Ukraine and former Soviet satellite states […]
A few weeks ago I outlined my peculiar teacher headspace this year as I face the challenge of teaching AP Lang after years of working to perfect English 11, a course I helped design from the ground up and continue to approach eagerly every day. In that post I outlined my major goal for the […]
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 […]
We know that writing strategies are everywhere. And, I am amazed at the amount of writing skills and strategies that are embedded into social media platforms. Although the student writer may not actually notice the author’s craft and intention that goes into well-crafted tweets, they are there in abundance, and I realized recently that these […]
Ever heard of the Enneagram? How could implementing personality types into ELA help your students better analyze characters and create authentic characters? I take you through some moves in this MW piece
moving writers 