Poetry is not only a dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before. Audre Lorde Before I was a teacher, I was a …
Becoming Anti-Racist English Teachers: Ways to Actively Move Forward by Michelle M. Falter, Chandra L. Alston, & Crystal Chen Lee
Becoming Anti-Racist English Teachers: Ways to Actively Move Forward by Michelle M. Falter, Chandra L. Alston , and Crystal Chen Lee of North Carolina State University The senseless police-initiated murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, amongst hundreds of other murders of Black …
Hurry Up, But Don’t Go Rushing In: Preparing to Do Effective Anti-Racist Work in English Classrooms
by Sophia Tatiana Sarigianides & Carlin Borsheim-Black, authors of Letting Go of Literary Whiteness: Antiracist Literature Instruction for White Students Right now, both of us are hearing from a lot of people in our lives, including local teachers and former teacher candidates, asking us what …
Last Quarantine Class: Writing, Grief, and Tiny Miracles
Well, friends, last night was the final meeting of classes for me at OSU, wrapping up my first year of teaching English ed full time. We, our writing methods course, ended with an open mic. Students (preservice teachers) read pieces from their journals — writing …
Going Online: Nurturing Learning & Community During a Pandemic
A wave of universities across the country has made the decision to move its classes online to address the new coronavirus pandemic. Arizona State University needed a little nudge from its students who created an online petition to cancel in-person classes. Harvard University Tuesday morning …
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, …
Keeping the “Circuit” Live: Rosenblatt, Pre-Service Teachers, and the Library
Especially in high school years, we should help young people to discover the power of literature to enable us to experiment imaginatively with life, to get the feel and emotional cost of different adult roles, to organize and reflect on a confused and unruly reality, …
All Children Are All Our Children by Doug Selwyn
Today’s post comes from Doug Selwyn. Doug has been an educator for more than thirty years, the first half as a teacher in K–12 in the Seattle Public Schools and the second half in teacher education, first at Antioch University, Seattle and then for ten …