By Shannon Falkner While English Language Arts classrooms will always be grounds for introducing students to literature and asking them to write about those readings, what if we also invited students to introduce us to the texts they love — the ones they’re already talking and thinking about? What if we offered them opportunities to…
By Kristen Marakoff and P.L. Thomas Kristen Marakoff’s journey to becoming a high school English teacher began 7 years ago in Paul Thomas’ foundations course. She completed the certification program at Paul’s university, where he taught English Language Arts teaching methods and supervised her field work. Paul also teaches first-year writing—after teaching high school English…
By Jonathan Bush On July 19, 2017, my 18 year-old daughter, Delaney, died. It was sudden and unexpected and unexplained. Sometime during that night, for no apparent reason her heart stopped. After months of investigation, we were left with the unsatisfying moniker of “Sudden Unknown Death in Children (SUDC)” as the only cause. But this…
Recently, a colleague I admire told me that she asks her student teachers to do the writing assignments they create for her ninth-grade students. That way, the student teachers understand what they’ve asked students to do and what might be challenging. Additionally, the student teachers are then able to model the steps of the process.…
by Alison Heron-Hruby, based on a study conducted by Annamary Consalvo, Ann David, Katrina Jansky, Alison Heron-Hruby, Marie LeJeune, and Amy Vetter When I (Alison) first decided to be a writer at the age of ten, it was because I loved Judy Blume novels. I wanted to create stories just like hers. Since then, I…
by Kristen Hawley Turner Originally posted on 6/8/15 School is out, and adolescents rejoice in summer freedom. Most will wait until the last minute to complete their summer reading and writing assignments. Writing, it seems, will take a two-month vacation along with the teenage crowd. Or will it? Every day, billions of messages are sent…
By David Premont In my first year of teaching secondary English, a member of the journalism class, wanting to highlight the school’s new teachers, asked if I could respond to a few questions. One question inquired about my identity as a teacher—I responded that in my heart I am a writer. I knew and was…
By Kate Sjostrom Who are these children sitting around me? Surely they are not my eight-year-old daughter and her classmates, though they look like them and go by their names. These children have just asked if they can skip recess to finish critiquing the story we have been reviewing for over two hours. These children…
by Charlotte L. Land Last year, a group of teachers (a first grade, fourth grade, seventh grade, and ninth grade teacher) got together with me (a university writing methods instructor working with future writing teachers) to explore a common question: how might we draw on understandings of design or design thinking to inform our teaching…
By Amber Jensen In the years I’ve spent as a student and a teacher in middle and high school, I have both asked and been asked the ubiquitous question: “But why do we have to learn this?” And I’ve told and been told the answer that so often follows: “You’re going to need to know…
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