One misconception I have to tackle every year is the average student’s belief that she “has nothing to write.” Students think that because their lives are “normal” or “middle / lower / upper class” or “happy / sad” that they have nothing worth writing about. This is, of course, untrue. Good writing comes from our…
7 Ways to Make Your Classroom More Engaging
Learning is state dependent. This means that learning is most determined by the emotional state of the learner. I most recently heard this while watching a promotional video by Jim Kwik, the speed-reading and memory guru and head of Kwik Learning. But many before him have also said it: Learning is state dependent. Think about…
Music in the Classroom
Last week, I used music twice in my high school English class. The first time was for a lesson on parallelism. After explaining the concept and having students look at historical examples, I played snippets of songs for them. They had to listen to the songs, and identify and explain the parallelism. I used a playlist…
The Power of Poetry
Yesterday, to commemorate 9/11, the assistant principal at our school read the poem “One” by Cheryl Sawyer (you can find it here). My students, who were only two years old at the occurrence of 9/11, stood absolutely motionless. I later thought about how the poem swirled around the room from the speaker above, how the words…
12 Ways Busy Teachers Can Become Writers
I recently attended a conference about teaching writing and heard a keynote speaker invoke the familiar mantra that writing teachers must be writers themselves. The speaker extolled the many virtues of the writing life: you feel better; you put life in perspective; you don’t miss anything; you practice what you preach. As a writer, I…
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