When Allison and I wrote Beyond Literary Analysis, we read thousands of pieces of writing in the quest to figure out what kind of analysis professional, published writer truly write outside academia. In other words, beyond what English teachers have culturally and historically deemed to be our analytical territory, what kind of analytical writing will […]
(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 […]
A few weeks ago, Rebekah and Allison reached out to the Moving Writers crew to coordinate our schedules and topics for this school year. I wanted to respond, but I was feeling more than a little stuck. I had two ideas, but they both felt pretty lame. I was swimming in doubt, so I reached […]
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
One of my favorite things about being part of a community of English teachers both in my building and online (Hi Teacher Twitter Buddies!) is that every once in a while this really fun thing happens where a piece of writing gets published somewhere with really powerful voice or a really fun structure and all […]
I’ve been a film fanatic since college, so my Twitter feed has a disproportionate share of film criticism amidst all the excellent educator voices. One of the better sites I’ve discovered for film coverage is Film School Rejects (Twitter handle: @oneperfectshot). They often just tweet singular frames from films which makes for great visual analysis […]
In one of her posts not so long ago, Hattie outlined a case for teaching a modern satire piece–a riff on the infamous A Modest Proposal. In her piece, she argues that there are three reasons the piece was worth examining in class alongside the original. I’d like to revisit two of those today as […]
We loved spending time with you at #NCTE18 and sharing a bit from Beyond Literary Analysis. A perfect way to follow up and dig deeper with us is to join us for a 3-part webinar series! Grab a glass of wine after work and join us to chat about why we need to broaden our […]
I want my students to be continually thinking about context–cultural, historical, and otherwise. For many of my students, the boundaries of their writing AND reading are constricted by their narrow contextual pools of knowledge. Helping them to see why the narratives of their history classes or the view through the microscope in biology are actually […]
I’ve been learning a ton on Twitter recently, like the fact that many of you are already on summer vacation. And I am not. I eventually moved past that, though, and decided to write this post anyway. After all, we’re all colleagues and once I’m finally on summer break too in a couple weeks, I’m […]
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