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How I Saved My Teaching Career: Reprise
Dear readers: I’ve received some comments and missives recently from discouraged teachers who have stumbled upon my blog and have found it helpful. This makes me very happy. However, there’s a place I want to send them, and I can’t. So I’m going to try to fix this problem. A few years ago, I published… Continue reading
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Essay Writing: The Cake Analogy
This week, I am working on essay structure with my post-intro students. After 22 years of teaching essay structure in various forms, I am, as you can imagine, sick of it. But then I came across this little analogy: how to bake your essay like a cake! It’s cute. It’s tasty. There are things here… Continue reading
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Plagiarism: What Do Students Think?
It is only a week and a half into the semester, and already my office mate and I are talking about plagiarism. There are hangovers from last semester – cases that never quite got resolved – and our college has a new plagiarism policy that requires, among other things, that we submit any plagiarism accusations to… Continue reading
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I Like Teaching You
Today is the first day of the new semester. I’m not exactly pumped. I’ve been working all weekend to find a motivator, or an inspiration, or a visualization to turn to when I feel it’s all too much. What’s my objective for the next fifteen weeks? What mantra will I repeat to myself on the… Continue reading
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Top 10 Posts of 2011
It’s that time of year again. (Actually, it’s a little past that time of year – it was that time of year, oh, two weeks ago, when it was still last year.) Nevertheless: a roundup! Here are the posts from Classroom as Microcosm that received the most hits this year. The reasons for their popularity… Continue reading
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2011 in Review
Interested in knowing some fun facts about Classroom as Microcosm’s stats for 2011? The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 97,000 times in 2011. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre… Continue reading
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Education From the Ground Up
I have once again received a very interesting query from a reader. The blog will be on hiatus until January 9, so you’ll have lots of time to think about it and respond! Jan Simpson would like to know: if you had to design an education system from scratch, how would you do it? Here,… Continue reading
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Bloggers Anonymous
As is usual this time of year, I’m dealing with a trying student. Yesterday, as a cathartic measure, I prepared a post in which I collated our email exchange since the beginning of the semester. If you are not me, this exchange is no doubt extremely entertaining. (If you are me, you spent most of… Continue reading
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Formatting Blues
The following conversation took place earlier this week on my personal Facebook page. Siobhan: Open memo to a student who shall remain nameless: Going into your final paper, you had an overall average of 59.7%. Did you not feel the stakes were high enough to invest half an hour in formatting your paper properly? Because… 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 