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Syntax Study for Earth Day

Placing Maggie Smith’s “Good Bones” and Craig Santos Perez’s “Good Fossil Fuels” side by side can elicit a wide-ranging classroom conversation about the ways the climate crisis is downplayed.  Through describing points of convergence and divergence, students can ponder how the “recycled” aspects of Smith’s syntax and prosody appearing in Perez’s poem challenge their thinking […]

An End-of-the-Year Essay Unit Plan that Brings Students + Literature Together

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 […]

“Why Did You _____?”: Ask Students to Annotate Their Own Writing

We are thrilled to share a new contributing voice today, Marcus Luther! We spied his smart tweets about student reflection in writing and begged him to write something for us! Marcus is currently in his eleventh year as a public high school English teacher. He teaches 10th grade English and AP Literature in Keizer, OR, […]