2020… Come on in! The Water’s Fine: School Reform Begins with Me by Sheryl Lain 5 May 20206 May 2020 When I was a kid, I could not bring my toes to release their hold on the lip of the high dive, even though my girlfriend pressed me forward, begging…
2020… Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World: A Cautionary Tale of Totalitarian Ideology by Shahin Hossain 5 May 20206 May 2020 In Texts and Pretexts, first published in 1932, while discussing his concern regarding the present and future, Aldous Huxley asserted, “Personally, I must confess, I am more interested in what…
2020… The Over-Simplified Guide to Creating Courses, Unit Plans, & Lessons by Jean Prokott 5 May 2020 Congratulations! You get to write your own course. What happens next? Here’s a list of ten steps that will make this whole process look a lot easier than it is:…
2020… Becoming THAT Teacher—An Account of One Year of Teaching by Kasden Watson 5 May 20206 May 2020 Like many, I believed that crossing the threshold of the downward ramp, and passing my tassel, meant that I was a full-blown teacher. I had graduated, and amidst the roar…
2020… #ReadingWars and Equity by Allison Sirovy 5 May 20206 May 2020 Following the #ReadingWars on social media? If you are, you may feel like me—lost and confused. Although I teach middle school English, reading instruction is near and dear to my…
2020… Fibonacci Spiral, or Why Four Middle Schoolers Are Enough by Sheryl Lain 5 May 2020 A Fibonacci spiral follows the sequence 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 11, etc., where each number is the sum of the two numbers before it; pineapples, starfish, sunflower…
2020… “Cool” Theft: AAVE Appropriation as a Tool of White Hegemony by Anna Lehn 5 May 2020 The 1940s archival footage may be grainy, but the big band and its lead singer, Helen O’Connell, are lily white. Her blond perm, powdered nose, and demure blouse pop in…
2020… Didn’t I See That Before?: Edgar Allan Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado” Seen in Saw & Saw IV by T. Madison Peschock 5 May 20206 May 2020 For the past decade, the humanities have been on the decline, and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) courses have been on the rise. As recent as February 2020, InsideHigher…
2020… Shoes, Rap Music, and Guns: Transitional Objects as Objective Correlatives in Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone by Tanya Stafsholt Miller 5 May 2020 When a person has gone through extreme trauma, writing about it can have a healing effect. The act of shaping the words on a page puts the trauma outside the…
2020… “It’s Not the Teacher’s Job”: Talking About Death and Death-Related Grief with Picture Books in Classrooms by Jongsun Wee and Heather J. Fye 5 May 2020 Introduction Death was not taboo in children’s literature before the 20th century (Clement and Jamali 5), but its presence disappeared from after World War I to the 1970s in Western…
2020… What Matters in the Classroom? A Pre-Survey by Jean Prokott 5 May 20206 May 2020 (Download a .docx version of this survey here) Below are various factors that make a successful classroom. Please rank them in the order of which you think is most important…
2020… Three Poems by Jean Prokott 5 May 20206 May 2020 BIRTH And at night, Uncle Duane would sleep with the upstairs window open in the farmhouse, let the wet, August night saturate the sheets and listen for the gurgling cries…
2019… We Follow by Sheryl Lain 26 Apr 201915 Sep 2019 I rode with Dad in our old Ford pickup, through a spring blizzard. Thick white snow blinded us. I was safe and warm inside Dad’s competence as he drove to…
2019… From Café to Class: Bringing Book Clubs Into Your Classroom by Hayley Vetsch 26 Apr 201927 Sep 2019 It’s easy to discuss books if you like to read. Hobby reading comes easily to most of us English teachers, but I’d wager that it is one of the hardest…
2019… The Sustainability of the Empathetic Teacher by Shaina Lane 26 Apr 201927 Sep 2019 At 6:30 on a snowy Monday morning, I click my key into the lock of the school office to start my day. There is never anyone there before me, which I…
2019… Opposites Attract: Binary Opposites in Alice Sebold’s Lucky by Tanya Stafsholt Miller 26 Apr 201927 Sep 2019 The cover of Alice Sebold’s memoir reads, “In the tunnel where I was raped, a girl had been murdered and dismembered. I was told this story by the police. In…
2019… Write Anything: How STEM Connects to the Writing Curriculum by Amber Beattie 26 Apr 201927 Sep 2019 I must begin with a confession: I am an English person. Truly, there is little that I love more in life than a new book or fresh sheet of stationery.…
2019… Owning Their Stories: Teaching Memoir at an Alternative High School by Amy Vizenor 26 Apr 201927 Sep 2019 On a sunny afternoon in May, I sat in the parking lot of Midwestern Alternative (pseudonym), a high school for “at-risk” students where I was interviewing for an English teaching…
2019… Educating with Little Tree: Reshaping The Education of Little Tree’s Cultural and Pedagogical Value in English Classrooms by Chris Drew 26 Apr 201927 Sep 2019 At a recent conference session on literary diversity in classrooms, I and other attendees were encouraged to pass around a selection of books, examine them, and discuss their possible classroom…
2019… Internalizing the Message by Kay J. Walter 26 Apr 201927 Sep 2019 I had a few extra minutes that day when I entered the classroom in which I was teaching composition to second-semester freshmen at my university. I teach at the University…
2019… The Same School Year: Narratives of Early- and Middle-Career Teachers in a U.S. Public School by Lisa M. Dembouski & Kari Eloranta 26 Apr 201927 Sep 2019 At the Start of the Year Kari: I thought I was ready. Student teaching had been everything I’d dreamed it would be. I’d spent countless hours studying, training, and volunteering…
2019… Minding the Body: Towards a Pedagogy of Enactment by Catherine Fox 26 Apr 201927 Sep 2019 Although unable to theorize it at the time, I dropped out of college when I was nineteen because the disconnect had become intolerable. To be a disembodied mind, taking in…
2018… #StayWoke: Empowering Students to Respond to Fake News by Mariah Morin & Heather Hurst 26 Apr 201827 Sep 2019 As my (Mariah's) own social media feeds were flooded with fake news and articles about fake news, my thoughts turned to students who must also be grappling with the tricky…
2018… Centering LGBTQ People of Color with Young Adult Literature in Secondary ELA by Cody Miller & Kathleen Colantonio-Yurko 26 Apr 201827 Sep 2019 As English language arts teachers, we believe young adult literature offers an avenue for voices and experiences that are largely ignored by canonical texts. LGBTQ voices are among those omitted…
2018… Centering Students’ Voices in a Public Speaking Genre Study by Burke Scarbrough 26 Apr 201827 Sep 2019 Today’s students have access to stirring, powerful text in an ever widening array of forms. As we invite our students to discover the power of the carefully crafted written word,…
2018… Public Grammar: Creating Community by Larry Gavin 26 Apr 201827 Sep 2019 There are five things most educators can agree on. First, most educators value student questions as a measure of student engagement in the classroom. Actually, questions are frequently the most…
2018… Seriously, What’s the Difference? by Jeanette Lukowski 26 Apr 201827 Sep 2019 It all began with an article from The New York Times titled “The Community College / ‘Real College’ Divide.” The article was part of an assessment tool being used by the…
2018… A Few Confessions of an English Teacher by Alexandra Glynn 26 Apr 201827 Sep 2019 Preparing for classes rouses up the guilt again. I teach writing, but I don’t do what I tell my students to do. I plagiarize, in a sense, all the time.…
2018… Listening to the Silence: Addressing Anxiety Disorders in Our Schools by Abby Rosen 26 Apr 201827 Sep 2019 As teachers, we ask a lot of our students. We demand not only respect for our authority, but curiosity, effort, and perseverance in the face of failure and humiliation. They…
2017… Beauty and the Beast Triptych: Piece 1–“Beauty and the Beastess” by Melanie Magaña 9 May 201727 Sep 2019 Please read the Introduction first. Then continue reading each piece in order. Click on the following titles to be magically transported to each piece of the triptych. 2. "Beast's Beauty" …
2017… Beauty and the Beast Triptych: Piece 2– “Beast’s Beauty” by Melanie Magaña 9 May 201727 Sep 2019 Please read the Introduction first. Then continue reading each piece in order. Click on the following titles to be magically transported to each piece of the triptych. "Beauty and the…
2017… Beauty and the Beast Triptych: Piece 3–“Beauty’s Beginning” by Melanie Magaña 9 May 201727 Sep 2019 Please read the Introduction first. Then continue reading each piece in order. Click on the following titles to be magically transported to each piece of the triptych. "Beauty and the…
2017… Beauty and the Beast Triptych: Re-imagining Stereotypes and Gender Roles by Melanie Magaña 9 May 201727 Sep 2019 [Ed. Note: At the end of this Introduction, readers are directed by links to the three pieces comprising the triptych.] Introduction I’ve had a bit of a love-hate relationship with the…
2017… Addressing Racial Injustice Through Allyship: Teaching to See by Using Poetry by Sharon Rudnicki 3 May 201727 Sep 2019 Introduction In 2016, America was treated to two excellent television series that focus on the life of O.J. Simpson, FX’s American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson…
2017… Closing the Door on Standardized Test Preparation and Opening the Door to Next Generation Literacy by Vicky Giouroukakis & Maureen Connolly 3 May 201727 Sep 2019 Introduction “I want to facilitate learning that helps students be the best versions of themselves.” “I teach to inspire a new generation of book lovers!”…
2017… Writing is Elemen‘tree’: A Visual, Auditory, and Tactile Framework for Navigating the Writing Process by Lyndi Maxwell 3 May 201727 Sep 2019 Abstract This article describes how teachers can use manipulatives, visual aids, and poetry to help students navigate a process-approach writer’s workshop. The workshop is presented as being analogous to how…
2017… Dogmatism and Teaching Writing by Alexandra Glynn 3 May 201727 Sep 2019 The great writing textbooks seldom prompt aspiring writers to be certain. The ancients assumed that they would already be, so there was no need to discuss it. The moderns deride…
2017… The Elements of English Studies by Brittany Stojsavljevic 3 May 201727 Sep 2019 Introduction As part of the introductory English studies class I took during spring semester 2016 in a graduate program at the University of St. Thomas, I was asked a deceptively…
2017… We Made it for You by Daniel Ellis 3 May 201727 Sep 2019 I’m here to speak truth. I’m here to speak truth. I’m here to speak truth. Truth in the light of histories textbooks. That deny my heritage. Truth in the light…
2017… The Formation of Thesis Statements: Beyoncé in the Secondary English Language Arts Classroom by Summer Melody Pennell 3 May 201727 Sep 2019 Abstract The author shares an example from her own teaching experience (with a student population of primarily African-American and Latinx youth) that illustrates that the lyrics and video for Beyoncé’s…
2017… Poetry Selections from Joshua Feliciano 3 May 201727 Sep 2019 More Than Just Words Poetry is like a song written on paper It doesn’t always have to rhyme It doesn’t always need time You could make a poem in poetry…
2016… Infographic-Making Activity by Michael MacBride 7 Jun 201627 Sep 2019 [pdf version here: MacBride-Infographic-activity] Objective: To encourage the use of charts, graphs, maps, and other infographics in student writing. Approximate Time Required: 30 minutes Materials Needed: A computer with access…
2016… What Is a Civic-Minded Student and How Can We Foster This in Our Classrooms? by Heidi Burns 6 Jun 201627 Sep 2019 [pdf version here: Burns, Heidi--News Summary Activity] (Burns also has a new book forthcoming, which contains similar activities ready to plug into your classroom. Check it out here: http://amzn.to/1U4195g) Civic-minded students…
2016… Five Ways in Which High-Quality Literacy Instruction Can Increase Student Interest in Our Content Areas by Kelly Birkett 31 May 201627 Sep 2019 [pdf version here: Birkett-FiveWays] Each year, on the day after Labor Day, the invasion begins. We stand in the hall next to our classrooms at the sound of the warning…
2016… Increasing Student Motivation in the Classroom by Mary Jo Kerekes 23 May 201627 Sep 2019 [pdf version here: MaryJoKerekes-StudentMotivation] How do I increase student motivation in my classroom? It is a question that I ask daily. Some students have a desire to “get a good grade”,…
2016… Building Literacy in all classrooms by Melissa Brandt 18 May 201627 Sep 2019 [pdf version here: Brandt-BuildlingLiteracy] As new teachers embark on the challenge of the classroom, they are given a barrage of guidance:…
2016… The “Write” Track: Effectively Leading Your School to Incorporate Writing in Every Classroom by Jennifer Simpson 12 May 201627 Sep 2019 [pdf version here: Simpson-TheWriteTrack] Currently, 42 states, the District of Columbia, four territories, and the Department of Defense Education Activity have adopted the Common Core State Standards (NGA). Minnesota adopted…
2016… Making Literacy Teaching a Priority in a Culturally Diverse Classroom by Adrienne Rische 10 May 201627 Sep 2019 [pdf version here: Rische-LiteracyTeachingCulturallyDiverse] Implementing culturally relevant pedagogy in the classroom has become an increasingly important priority for English teachers. In this piece, I will explore the difficulties that come with…
2016… Read Them Together: Paired Book Reading for Global Literature by Jongsun Wee & Barbara A. Lehman 4 May 201627 Sep 2019 [pdf version here: Wee-Lehman-ReadThemTogether] Abstract: The need for global literature is growing as the society rapidly becomes more diverse. This study documented American children’s responses to global literature when it was…
2016… Implementing Tabletop Gaming in the English Classroom: Promoting Literacy through Interactive Gameplay by Mike P. Cook, Ryan Morgan, & Matthew Gremo 2 May 201627 Sep 2019 [pdf version here: cook-implementing-tabletop-gaming-in-the-english-classroom] Introduction Table-top gaming, at its core, is simply a term used to refer to any social game that is traditionally played in person around a…
