In my first semester beat, I’m exploring the life-saving power of routines–but not just any routines. I’m talking about routines that make life easier, more efficient, and more familiar–even in the most daunting of times (cough, 2020, cough). I’m talking about routines that allow students to thrive whether you are teaching in person, virtually, hybrid, […]
ESSENTIAL QUESTION: How do we provide students with the opportunities and space to write “sin miedo”? ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION: What does it mean to write without fear? Where does fear come from in the context of writing in the classroom? What kinds of classroom traumas create or worsen this fear? How do we help […]
Reconsidering my classroom practices from the perspective of a very serious video gamer…a post about writing that just happens to use video games as a metaphor
Things are crazy right now, to say the least. When I started my instructional coaching job, I made a vision and a mission statement that I hung up above my desk. I refer to it more often than I care to admit as I often let my agenda, my feelings, and what I think is […]
Earlier this month, the Moving Writers Team collaborated on a post titled “12 Writing Experiences for Processing the Election.” Within the post, I shared an idea where writers use the following prompt to build an argument surrounding the concept of compulsory voting. With my beat this school year being about revision, I saw this post […]
I find many of of my students have seldom, if ever, been allowed to choose and focus their own topics. They have been, as I often say, “prompted to death.” Yet the work of choosing and focusing a topic are essential writing moves – perhaps the most important writing moves of all, because they involve […]
With almost everyone back to school in some unusual, frustrating form by now, it feels like a weird time to be asking you to kick back and read an educational blog. I know–I lost you at “kick back.” But I’m hoping this one might be timely–it’s a revelation I had this Tuesday afternoon after spending […]
Trigger Warning: this post opens with a possibly offensive rant. If you feel the need to skip said rant, I have inserted a subheading to indicate where it is safe to begin reading. When I first started this beat about starting over and about being more intentional with which practices we keep and which ones […]
When I started blogging for Moving Writers, I wrote mostly about my practice in the classroom. Since my role has shifted away from the classroom and toward supporting teachers, I spend a lot more time working on my own practice for adult learning. So most of what I blog about lately is about professional learning […]
This year at Moving Writers, I’ll be dedicating some of my posts to exploring the ways I try to help two of my students, who I’ve nicknamed Troy and Abed. I’ve chosen them as a focus for the year partially because I already know them from their freshman and sophomore years, having worked closely […]
