Inspiration One of my favorite poems to teach is “An Echo Sonnet: To An Empty Page” by Robert Pack. (Scroll to page 2 for the complete poem.) The poem appeared on the 2011 AP Lit and Comp exam in the free-response section, tasking students with …
December 2/5-Day Writing Challenge
Inspiration Fib (Fibonacci poem): A Fib poem marries math and poetry. Gregory K. Pincus created the Fib to commemorate National Poetry Month in 2006. From that first post, a Fib movement began. Fibs are based on the Fibonacci sequence, according to this post from the …
December 1/5-Day Writing Challenge
Inspiration Golden Shovel: Inspiration for our poems comes from many places. Terrance Hayes created the Golden Shovel poetry form from Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem “We Real Cool.” Hayes named his poem “The Golden Shovel,” and if we look at the last word in each line of …
Tenure-Track: The First Semester Check-In Reflection
This week, I wrap up my first semester as tenure-track faculty. In case you missed it, I left my 15-year position as a junior high language arts teacher in June to become a full-time teacher educator. How does that happen, you ask? Since you asked, …
Conference FOMO? I really didn’t mean to make you feel left out.
Social media is a blessing and a curse. As an introvert, social media offers access to people, places, and lives I would otherwise never know because, except for certain times of the year, I am mostly a hermit. Still, when on social media I see …
#NCTE19 & #ALAN19
This year I have the privilege of attending all four days of NCTE and two days of The ALAN Workshop. Up until now, I had always been a classroom teacher who had to pay her own registration and travel, take her only two personal days, …
November: 5/5-Day Monthly Writing Challenge
Thank you for joining us to write this November. I hope to see you at NCTE. This is where I will be: If you have teacher-friends and writers who would enjoy our community, please invite them to sign up for December with the wonderful Glenda …
November: 4/5-Day Monthly Writing Challenge
Inspiration Try a quatrain today and see if it restricts or liberates — or some combination. A quatrain is a four-line poem that can have the same number of syllables in each line to create rhythm. You might try an end-rhyme pattern like abab, aabb, …
November: 3/5-Day Writing Challenge
Inspiration A Piece of Artwork. While you might not be able to zip off to the nearest art museum (if you can, do!), zero in on a piece of artwork – a painting, a sculpture, a ceramic piece… here at the St. Louis Art Museum, …
November: 2/5-Day Monthly Writing Challenge
Inspiration Reflect on your greatest struggle, however you define it. Tell the story of how you overcame or are overcoming it. Consider how enduring the struggle has changed you — perhaps, for the better. A few questions to help you move through the the process. …