Blog Posts

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… Read more: Pondering Passion

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… Read more: School is Supposed to be Boring

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… Read more: Bring Equity to your Classroom with Contracts

Reading and writing are different skills that don’t necessarily inform each other— in my career I’ve met both prolific readers who struggle with sentence structure, as well as great writers who hardly ever read. Because of this, I try to approach the two aspects of English Language Arts— writing and literacy— as separate skills which… Read more: My Teaching Philosophy