I’ve been gone for quite a long time. Some of it was an intentional absence—time to settle in after the move and enjoy a bit of summer in our new home. But the remainder was unplanned. Once school started back, there were many times I tried to force myself back into the habit of research …
Exodus: A Teacher’s Story
In less than forty-eight hours, I will be crossing the West Virginia state line for the final time. Though I spent the better part of my youth daydreaming of a larger world and much of my early adulthood was lost to pipedream plans of leaving, I never left. Something, or somethings, always kept me here—whether …
Sociology in English Class: Doing Personal Narratives Differently
I used to start every semester off with a brief unit on personal narratives. We would read short pieces and excerpts of longer narratives, discussing important themes and moves the writers made in telling their stories, and the unit would ultimately culminate in students writing their own personal narratives. I abandoned this a few years …
Sketchnoting: Expanding Student Choice
I’m constantly consuming professional literature and find myself in a perpetually reflective/revisionary state regarding my curriculum and practices. I remain haunted by one of my more recent intellectual feasts, EMPOWER: What Happens When Students Own Their Learning, by John Spencer and A.J. Juliani (read more about it here). While I’ve been a PBL convert for a couple of …
Classroom Reflections After Reading Empower
Innovation has become a bit of a buzz word in education, and while the term may be trendy and even over- and misused, innovation is crucial to the survival of relevant and effective education. But change cannot be carried out for the sake of change; rather, as John Spencer and A.J. Juliani put it in …
SURVIVOR Citation Island: How to Host an MLA Game Show
Easing into March, we’re rounding the corner on research time (at least in my department). While research has become the most enjoyable part of my curriculum since launching the passion project, most of my colleagues seem to dread the research portion of their curriculum, finding it downright painful and cumbersome, with one of the more …
Why I Begin With Stories
Ice breakers. Cold starters to awkwardly edge a group of strangers toward conversation with the eventual goal of building a semblance of community of learners and collaborators. As educators we’ve all been subjected to our fair share of ice breakers during numerous kickoffs of a variety of professional development workshops, and we’ve subjected our students …
A New (and Exciting!) Way to do Shakespeare
Rehashing some Folger Library love in promotion of the WVELA 19 Conference at West Virginia University in late March! I know I should probably keep this a secret, but I hate teaching Shakespeare. I visibly cringe (and occasionally twitch) when that part of the semester rolls around. I can hear the eyes rolling before I …
Expanding Agency and Inquiry in the Classroom
I posted previously sharing some of the incredible work my students have been doing with the Passion Project, and the presentations they shared before the winter break have had me doing some serious thinking about what more this project could be in my classroom. And it’s not just because of the quality of work my students put …
