It’s easy to forget that all students have different personality styles. As educators, we often adopt one way of motivating regardless of the individual we are dealing with. For instance, I know a guidance counselor who is a former football …
1611. 1729. 1847. When connected to reading passages, these are frightening dates. They are, in fact, the publication dates of Macbeth, A Modest Proposal and Jane Eyre, all of which have appeared in classrooms and on standardized tests. If you …
Being back in school at the age of thirty-six, I have noticed many changes since the old times when I was an undergrad. I overhear a lot of stuff I don’t understand, for instance kids fifteen years younger than me …
There’s more to school than reading, writing, and arithmetic. School is perhaps a student’s first interaction with a social environment outside of his or her own family. It is important that we create environments in which students can grow into …
Ah yes, the home stretch, the light at the end of the tunnel, the finish line: it’s getting to be that time of year when the end comes into view. With the buds and the dandelions comes an itch to …
Everyone has a story. When we fail to understand others’ stories, we fail to understand their experiences, their perspectives, and their struggles. We can’t truly know someone without knowing his or her narrative. Case in point: I tutored a student …
Writing is an art. But when reduced to rubrics, margins and word counts, it becomes a chore. Unless you’re Charles Dickens, who got paid by the word, you probably don’t look forward to writing a ten-page paper. To compound the …
On my desk right now is a book titled Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland. I don’t plan to read it. In fact, I don’t even like wrestling. It’s on my desk waiting for …
It was Thoreau who said “simplify, simplify.” This sounds…well, simple but I think it’s actually one of the more difficult skills to master in life, mainly because life itself tends to not be all that simple. However, I believe the …
Snowflakes, fingerprints, whatever cliché you want to reference, we know all students are unique. The question is how do we educators avoid rote, the belief that students can obtain knowledge through inflexible repetition and memorization? I worked with a student …