Forgetting your Why Midway through 2020’s un-precendence, Zadie Smith published a book of personal essays. In one of these, she lays out plainly her reason for writing: I empathize with Zadie Smith when she says later that admitting writing is merely “something to do” smacks of false humility. Of course, these feelings of perceived insincerity must […]
Imagine this common scenario. A teacher is starting a new lesson on some abstract idea — imaginary numbers, angular momentum, Shakespearean prosody, something like that — and a student asks the following question: “Why are we learning this?” You’ve heard this before. You’ve probably asked it before. As an English teacher who teaches novels and plays frequently, I hear […]
Introduction: The Problem with Averages Traditional grading is one of those things so fundamental to our understanding of school that we think it’s somehow obvious, necessary, or even objectively correct. Yet, traditional grading systems, and the type of classroom culture they tend to foster, are full of problems. These problems, as obvious as they’ll soon […]