Welcome to day one! Today’s inspiration: What is the best part of you? Write a descriptive poem about your favorite part of you. Here are a few bullet points to get you started. describe what your best part looks like — size, color, shape, texture …
30 Poems: A Celebration of Poetry Begins April 1st
The 30 Poems Celebration begins April 1st! Let’s celebrate together all that poetry does for our hearts, minds, and humanity. This month-long celebration is all about helping people write poems in a supportive, virtual space. Anyone can participate — life-long poets, new-to-the-craft poets, rhymers, free-versers, musings-writers. …
Four Hallway Haiku
I could feel the fever spiking. And my blood was simmering. It was the week before spring break, and the symptoms of cabin fever among the students were spreading. They’d submitted their final portfolios –letters to parents with hyperlinks to all their learning for the past …
In Defense of Civic Engagement in Schools
By Brian Charest, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of Redlands, School of Education Last week, we saw firsthand the incredible democratic potential and power of civic engagement. Hundreds of thousands of students across the country, in places like Los Angeles and Chicago, from New York to Parkland, and …
A Teacher’s Needs: Time for a Self-Assessment
About two months ago, I began the new year with my junior high English students in not setting resolutions — those never seem to work well — but by choosing one word to help us change, improve, and be, well, better in the new year– all …
Beginning and Nurturing Reading Lives by Jaime Lewandowski
How It Began It was awkward at first: we knew that parents-to-be could read to their unborn child throughout pregnancy, but it felt strange for 30-somethings to be reading Dr. Seuss on the couch at night. Even the dogs looked at us funny. And when …
The Pleasure of Difficulty by Peter Anderson
I have three English teacher confessions. First, I don’t like Shakespeare. I’ve never taught any of the bard’s works and I’d rather keep it that way. Next, I don’t enjoy poetry. I’m more of a maximalist, so the art of compression has never tugged at …
Reading and Teaching 1984: What if Some of Them Don’t “Get It”? by David Schaafsma
Recently I reread 1984 by George Orwell, which I had read the first time in high school in the sixties, have taught many times, and had not reread for decades. I saw that the book was perhaps the best selling book of 2017, which I …
I Read for Me, I Read for My Students by Travis Crowder
In my office rest several boxes, filled with remnants of my childhood–books from my earliest reading days and pages of hand-written stories, ones held together by frayed and faded blue thread. Every so often, I dig through these boxes. Even now, as I glance at …
#WHATSTHETEACHERREADING by Maria Losee
It was a beautiful and rare, sunny afternoon in Seattle, Washington. I was walking down a hallway with Jane Addams Middle School principal, Paula Montgomery, when she stopped suddenly and stepped into a classroom. We had been chatting about that afternoon’s professional development that I’d …