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Of School Reform and The Common Core
So here we are in the midst of another school reform movement. Here’s a funny thing. I’ve worked as a high school English teacher for about twenty-four years now, and while I consider myself...
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Of English Teacher Math: Teaching 200 Students How To Write
Here are some numbers to consider for the end of the semester. I asked 140 IB English students to turn in their logs, into which they have composed over the last 4 weeks anywhere between 20 and 30...
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Of Furlough Days
I’ve been laid off today with all of the employees of my school district, and, by proxy, all of the students in my school district. The school doors are locked. Do not enter. Sorry, we are temporarily...
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#5: Friday Irony
I know I said I wanted to take a break from writing about teaching, but today was kind of a frustrating day and I couldn’t help myself. This is a poem called a cinquain, apparently, because the stanza...
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#17: The American Teenagers Have Theories About The Ancient Chinese Masters
The American Teenagers Have Theories About The Ancient Chinese Masters They’re just making stuff up. Here’s one that says that Li Po was Wang Wei’s evil twin, his doppelgänger, or that the two poets...
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#18: Let’s Pretend The Schoolhouse Is Broken
Let’s Pretend The Schoolhouse Is Broken I know! I have an idea: Let’s pretend the schoolhouse is broken even though we know it’s not so that a tiny number of thinkers and bureaucrats, of which I am...
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#32: Gatsby? What Gatsby?
Gatsby? What Gatsby? is what Daisy says when she hears Jordan Baker mention the name to Nick, and it’s what teenagers used to say before they knew Leonardo DiCaprio was starring in the new Baz...
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#36: On Teaching Vietnam
On Teaching Vietnam We have read Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War and now we’re watching a film called Regret To Inform, a documentary inspired by Barbara Sonneborn’s personal quest, twenty years after...
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#39: On the End of the School Year
On the End of the School Year It’s always a cluster, unnatural and awkward in every way, but mostly for teachers, or maybe just for teachers like yourself, English teachers with too many students, too...
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#41: On the Very Last Work Day of the School Year
On the Very Last Work Day of the School Year It began with a breakfast during which we said tearful goodbyes to beloved colleagues retiring or moving on, a difficult, but joyful thing, wanting them to...
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The Going-Back-To-Work Blues Is A Real Thing
20 blog entries later, and the summer break comes to a close. Teachers report back to their schools in my district on Monday. Time to take stock. Time to look ahead. It’s been a strong summer. I...
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#74: The American English Teacher is Worried about the Burnout of His Colleagues
Perhaps, they love teaching and learning. And while they may not love children just because they’re children, they love the idea of helping young people reach their full potential, navigate the waters...
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#81: The American English Teacher Addresses His Students About the Failed...
He announces a quiz over the Washington Irving story his students were supposed to have read in class on the previous day. The quiz is designed to efficiently assess what, if anything, they understood...
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#95: On the End of Spring Break
There’s laundry to fold and put away and dust bunnies to suck up and it’s raining and blowing so hard we’re sort of trapped in here. Water puddles up in the flower beds and these damn sugar ants keep...
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School House Rock ‘n’ Sock
Almost two months ago now, in the throes and excitement and the optimism of a new school year, I found myself writing with my students and posting the results as blog entries here on the Michael...
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Mindfulness in 2015: Day #17
After just now almost putting a pot of hot coffee into the refrigerator, I decide to spend a few minutes reflecting on how my Mindfulness Project for 2015 is coming along. To begin with, I just tried...
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#149: Unspeakable
Unspeakable I’m trying to find words to describe how I feel when, during a reading from Elie Wiesel’s Night, I look up and see students looking at their phones. One student, in particular, looks at...
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#169: Freshmen Boys
My 7th period class is chaos. Boys trapped in their teenage bodies don’t know how to do anything; even being human is too difficult. Listening, completely out of the question. Seriousness, a concept...
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Against a Wall: A Teacher’s Manifesto
It has been coming on for a year or two, maybe longer, but I feel it now in my 28th year of teaching more keenly than ever: I have come up against a wall. This is the condition in which I find myself...
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#190: Wheels
For day #2 of napowrimo, I offer up a found poem, a poem that steals its text wholesale from some other non-poetic source, say, a newspaper article, or a sign, or the print on a cereal box. While the...
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