literacy
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Help for the Restless Reader
In recent years, I’ve become a restless reader. I just can’t relax. Maybe it’s because I spend so many weeks of the year reading stuff I don’t feel like reading, including some really terrible writing, because I’m an English teacher. Maybe it’s because the Internet age has broken my brain. Maybe it’s because I’m an Continue reading
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A Book Blog For Teachers
Friend and reader Tara Warmerdam just pointed me to her wonderful blog, A Reading Corner for Teachers and Writers. I’m so glad she did: she writes about books in a way that is meant to be helpful to teachers, and it really is. Some recent posts discuss a great book about teaching Shakespeare to young people, using picture books in Continue reading
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A Course Plan for Literary Appreciation and Analysis: Blogiversary Post #6
I struggle with conflicting philosophies about my job. I teach English literature (as well as language and composition) as core curriculum in CEGEP, a transitional/professional college that all Quebec students must attend before moving on to university or to many professions. My classes are therefore comprised of students of wildly varying levels of ability and interest Continue reading
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FYI
Dear Composition 101 students: “YOLO” is not a topic sentence. Continue reading
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Fiction Makes You Better at Stuff
I’m planning some research on whether reading/studying fiction and other kinds of narrative is really such an important thing to do. I was therefore immediately drawn to this article (even though it’s Saturday night and I’m desperately trying to finish grading a stack of papers): a commentary on why techie geeks should read fiction. Is Continue reading
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Corporatizing Education: A Justification
So let me just put this out there. Yesterday I attended a talk by the renowned/infamous literary theorist Stanley Fish. Fish’s talk was entitled “What are the Humanities Worth?” He began exploring this question by referencing Louis Menand’s article “Live and Learn: Why We Have College.” Menand poses a similar question, often asked by students: Continue reading
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Children’s Literature Reading List Update
In the last two days, I have read/reread: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler Then Again, Maybe I Won’t A Series of Unfortunate Events Book 1: A Bad Beginning The Phantom Tollbooth I have also spent several lovely hours wandering through the stacks of three different children’s libraries. The nostalgia is permeating Continue reading
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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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The Uses of Boredom: Reprise
An earlier version of this week’s reprint appeared in July of 2009. It tells the story of how and why I became a reader. And it asks: how do we learn to like challenging tasks if we live in a world where boredom is impossible? * I became a reader because I was bored. I 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 