This year at Moving Writers, I hope to explore various ways to utilize writing practices in your classroom to build strong social-emotional relationships with students despite the physical separations imposed on classrooms by the pandemic. I hope very much that this proves to be a limited series… When I posted my first contribution of the […]
I want my students to become confident using mentor texts to guide and inspire their writing — it’s one of the most transferable skills I can give them for school and life beyond school. But, as I shared last month, I’ve been thinking a lot recently about a kind of independence that comes after that. […]
With all the conversation and debate around “student indoctrination” and political beliefs of educators, after weeks of contemplation, I decided to put my experience out into the world to help people navigate their personal and political beliefs in the context of writing instruction. There is a certain level of vulnerability that comes with addressing our […]
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 […]
If finding the words that seem to be stuck in your throat is not finding your voice, then what is?
Everyone is obsessed with true crime lately. True crime podcasts, true crime TV shows, true crime movies, true crime documentaries. I feel like every time I turn around, I see another preview for another true crime series on Netflix. And, here’s the thing, I’m totally down for it. My podcasts, my list on Netflix – […]
(Above is a recording of the following article) If I had a quarter for everytime someone told me that we don’t have time to write in subjects other than ELA I think I might be a millionaire. Writing is such an integral part of every subject area and I am on a mission to make […]
A few weeks ago, I attended a webinar from Matt Glover and Carl Anderson on Writing Workshop. At the end of the webinar, Carl held a live conference with an amazing middle grade student. She wanted some help with her poem about her family’s annual trip to the beach, this summer during the pandemic. “How […]
I’ve received many emails over the past few weeks about my 2014 post on The American Teenager Project, a book by Robin Bowman that showcases hundreds of interviews and photographs of teenagers around the world. In this post, I share how I’ve used this project to kick off writing workshop at the beginning of the […]
If you were to get inside my head on my way home from school on a given day, you might hear an internal dialogue that goes something like this… 5th hour was a total mess today. I could just feel a vibe from my students that they were not understanding the argumentative writing technique I […]
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