In the spring of 2010 I made a joke that landed well with the ninth grade class I was student-teaching at Atlee High School. I don’t remember the joke, but I remember the response of my (Catholic-trained) cooperating teacher.     “We’re not comedians,” he growled at me after the students were gone.  I think of that comment a lot. Our business is education, not entertainment. My cooperating teacher, who took his job as an educator seriously, wanted to make sure I didn’t lose sight of that. (Which is not to say he was a bore. In fact he had a fine … Continue reading Ranking my experiments with the online medium, from least to most gimmicky

These are expanded versions of my Rising Knight Nominations for two students this quarter.

Rank these high-school-English-teacher-goals in order of importance: -develop a student’s love of literature -develop a student’s argumentative writing skills -develop a student’s writing voice  Obviously your answer will reflect your priorities. For a moment, though, let’s use the Loudoun County mission statement as our guide… The mission of the Loudoun County Public Schools is to work closely with students, families, and the community to provide a superior education, safe schools, and a climate for success. The educational programs of Loudoun County Public Schools will strive to meet or exceed federal, state, and local requirements for assessment of achievement and to … Continue reading How to improve the Big Question Essay

Is a social critique successful if the audience leaves the work invigorated for the lifestyle it purports to critique?  I think of fans of The Wolf of Wall Street. Scorsese in 2013, defending the film’s debauchery and depiction of white collar crime: “This is something that’s not going to go away if you don’t talk about it.”  But there are different ways of “talking about” something. The frat bros who thrill to that three-hour flick are not watching with their hands soberly at their chin, saying, “Yes, that Jordan sure does make a mess of things, the poor guy. I … Continue reading Rethinking The Great Gatsby’s place in the high school canon

I was excited last week to hear that Loudoun County Superintendent Eric Williams will be leaving soon for a new job in Texas. Not because I’m a glutton for LCPS drama, and not that I have anything against Mr. Williams. But I sensed a potential mini-unit in the surprising news, which would provide a fantastic resource of texts to use in my AP Language and Composition classes: press releases, newspaper editorials, statements from parents, and all of it centered around an issue that was relevant to my students. Most importantly, I deemed it a fine opportunity to examine the carefully wrought … Continue reading I hate to see you leave (but I love to rhetorically analyze your goodbye)

I just finished the audiobook of Adrian Goldsworthy’s Caesar, Life of a Collosus, and by far my biggest takeaway was how modern many of Caesar’s behaviors seem even from the distance of over two thousand years. A lot of that is because Caesar has set the standard against which all effective leaders (well, dictators) are judged. But Caesar wore many hats in addition to being a dictator. In fact, his time as a dictator took up only a few brief years before his life was literally cut short one morning in mid-March BC 54. His formative years were spent training … Continue reading I came, I saw, I began class with a Kahoot: Caesar as a teacher

After attending some online professional development workshops this summer, I quickly realized the (short) scope of my (brief) attention span during online learning. That’s not a knock on the professional development. The workshops were well-run and thoughtfully planned. But still. It’s tough, paying attention in your own home, with all its attendant distraction.  This self-knowledge was instructive for me as I began to plan my curriculum for the fall. It was my AP Language and Composition classes in particular I was worried about. One was scheduled for fourth block (the final class of A day) and one was scheduled for … Continue reading Smashing the likes

The following grades are formative, meant to monitor effectiveness, provide feedback, and encourage goals both personal and in some cases corporate. These grades are not final, and can go up or down as the year progresses.  Flipgrid: I’ve known about it for three years, but every year I always found an excuse not to try it out. Beyond the puzzling name (what’s being flipped here exactly?) I just didn’t feel comfortable asking students to record themselves trying to answer scholarly questions for all their peers to watch. And if students weren’t recording scholarly responses…what was the point of using it? … Continue reading Assigning grades to the education technology I have been using over the past two months

This summer — in place of weddings, dinner parties and large family gatherings — I surrounded myself in the company of over a dozen authors, some of whom I found more pleasant than others. Today, for your future reading purposes, I have summoned these fifteen authors to one long table, at which I am seated at the head. With great care and subjectivity, I have arranged my guests at the table based on the amount of pleasure their books brought me.  Sitting to my right in the seat of honor is Deborah Feldman, author of my favorite pandemic read: her … Continue reading The best and worst books I read this summer

After ten years in the show, there’s one topic I have never explored sufficiently in my classes: what’s the most effective way to study and retain what we learn? I think the failure to discuss this topic with students is probably true for most of us in secondary education. No matter the subject, the pattern is similar: introduce and lecture about concepts, ask the students to apply the content, then assess knowledge. Students devote some amount of time studying and devoting the concepts to their memory as best they can. Why haven’t I spent more time explaining to students the … Continue reading All about Anki