Let’s be honest: PD isn’t what it could be. I’m preparing for a presentation I’ll be giving at the EARCOS conference in Bangkok next week, and the driving force behind my planning was the question: What can teachers take away that is immediately helpful, practical, and concrete so that they can go use it? I […]
In a post a few weeks ago I argued that the trend of pushing more non-fiction in English/Language Arts classes was flawed; the teaching of literature has real and important benefits, including the teaching of empathy, the ability for students to test out new and scary concepts, and improving people skills, which might really be lost […]
My dad is fond of saying just that: plan. To adjust. It’s his way of describing how best to design curriculum in that we should have a clear plan of where we are going but be flexible about the way we get there, allowing for adjustments along the way. The “adjust” part hit home for me […]
The new common core standards for English/Language Arts call for, among other things, less fiction and more nonfiction in American ELA classrooms. The thinking is that most of what we read on a daily basis is nonfiction, so we’d better teach more of it so students are better equipped to understand the genre, both for comprehension […]
Let me start this post by saying I am a lover of languages; I have studied languages through high school and university, and I have taught high school Spanish and ELL. Because I love language learning, I can’t really understand how we teach it in most American schools all over the world: in an ineffective, uninspiring, […]
Writing — is there any more important skill in today’s world? And, more importantly for us educators, are we doing the teaching of it the justice it deserves? In a perfect world, I think every high school would do what schools like Loomis Chaffee have done and require all students to take an additional writing-intensive […]
Parenting has a way of handing you your words on a plate and a fork with which to eat them. Case in point: I was “never” going to let my children: eat sugar, watch TV, pretend-play with guns, play video games…the list is long. But reality bumped up against my good but hopelessly naive intentions. […]
Here’s a cartoon I came across recently on Facebook: It was timely, because I was feeling something similar myself. I’ve had more push back from parents and students in recent years about grades. Think back to your high school years — would you have challenged a teacher on a grade […]
It’s midterm grading time, and I have that perennial “meh” feeling as I try to distill my assessment of students down to one letter grade. Only this time it’s worse. Maybe I’m getting old and cranky (at 33!), but somehow I can’t quite stomach the inaccuracy of grading anymore. I had a conversation with a […]
I had a really successful week this week with my grade 11 students, and had two take-aways: 1. Sometimes we all need a little creativity to make us more productive analytically 2. I may have to radically shift how I teach. First, the creativity: My grade 11s are finishing up their first text, The Great […]