higher education
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Willing to Read and Write: Reprise
Last week, this post – first published in September of last year – spiked in my blog stats. It seemed a whole pile of people were reading it, but I couldn’t figure out who or why, although the search term “effort” had a corresponding spike. Maybe now, at midterm, teachers and students are being hard… Continue reading
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One Minute of Solitude: Reprise
We are six weeks into the semester, and I’m starting to pinpoint small classroom management issues and think about appropriate responses. Nothing major has arisen so far (fingers crossed), but whenever I am confronted with hints of passive-aggressiveness, defiance or rudeness, I start evaluating what I need to do: ignore? Confront? Defuse in some other… Continue reading
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Holden Caulfield Has Left the Building: Reprise
I’m not teaching The Catcher in the Rye this term, but I’m pre-planning next year’s course on novels about adolescence, and wondering whether to include it in the list. The post below, first published in June 2009, grapples with the possibility that maybe it’s not the best choice for today’s youth, at least not those in… Continue reading
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Up and At ‘Em
It’s almost that time again. I hope you’ve all had a great summer. Mine has been thrilling, terrifying and exhausting, all on a small domestic scale. You will hear about some of it in the coming weeks. The upshot: school begins on Monday, and I am neither refreshed nor enthusiastic, but I am nothing if… Continue reading
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Who’s to Blame for the Student Strike Mess?
Until now, I haven’t commented on the madness happening in Montreal streets concerning tuition hikes. I haven’t commented because my feelings about the tuition hikes, and the resulting student strikes and protests, are, as a friend recently described his own, “nuanced.” I am not in principle opposed to tuition hikes in Quebec. I AM opposed… Continue reading
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What’s In a Name?
What do your students call you? Would you rather they called you something else? A couple of years ago, a reader named “Viceroy” left this baffling comment on a post that had nothing to do with his observation. I notice that your students, who appear to be 17 & 18 years old, are required to… Continue reading
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How I Saved My Teaching Career: Step 4: Face Your Fears
This is the fifth post in a series on how to overcome burnout and love teaching again. See the end of this post for previous entries. When I first started teaching, I was scared. Terrified, in fact. I’d taken a job as a Second Language Monitor – a sort of assistant language teacher –… Continue reading
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How I Saved My Teaching Career: Step 2: Take Time Off
One of my favourite quotes about burnout is from Bertrand Russell’s essay “Education and Discipline”: … it is utterly impossible for over-worked teachers to preserve an instinctive liking for children; they are bound to come to feel towards them as the proverbial confectioner’s apprentice does towards macaroons. I do not think that education ought to… Continue reading
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How I Saved My Teaching Career: Step 1: Take Stock. Is It Worth It?
This is the second post in a series on how to overcome burnout and love teaching again. For the introductory post, go here. On Monday, I introduced my career crisis. After teaching joyfully for many years, I was tired, discouraged and ready to quit. But I paused before throwing in the towel. I took a… Continue reading
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How I Saved My Teaching Career: Introduction
A few years ago, I was ready to quit my teaching job. But I didn’t. I’ve been a teacher in some capacity for twenty-three years. I fell in love with the profession when I was a college student and landed a part-time job as an assistant language teacher in an elementary school. I was sure… Continue reading
About Me
My job is to teach people to read and write; aside from that, I like to learn things.
Classroom as Microcosm 