Two years in a row now I have suffered through what I like to call The Great Student Growth Goal Debacle and I finally have to say something about it publicly. Cuz it’s driving me absolutely ass-bat crazy. Good teachers set goals for themselves, but all teachers have always set goals for their bosses, theContinue reading “The Great Student Growth Goal Debacle”
Monthly Archives: May 2016
#223: A Course in Silence
My sophomores and I are studying the poetry of William Stafford and, as is inevitable in a study of poetry, at least from my perspective, we are also writing poems. An exercise slightly more open-ended than the corruption assignment, is to simply take inspiration from our man Stafford, either by attempting, as he did forContinue reading “#223: A Course in Silence”
#222: Why I Am Happy
Poet and teacher of mine from a long way back, Peter Sears, taught me about a thing called poetry by corruption, whereby you, the writer, take a poem that you like and just simply and with impunity steal things from it, or, steal it wholesale except for some words or phrases you’ve blanked out from theContinue reading “#222: Why I Am Happy”
Letter to a Colleague in Her Second Year of Teaching
Dear Friend, I don’t pretend to be able to advise you, but I can tell you what I have done to ensure that I do not become a casualty of the oftentimes insurmountable and sometimes impossible demands of the profession. In your second year of teaching, if you find yourself in a perpetual stateContinue reading “Letter to a Colleague in Her Second Year of Teaching”
April’s Greatest Hits: Audio Poems
So it was that during all of April I wrote poems, 32 of them to be precise, in celebration of National Poetry Writing Month. And they all, or most of them, turned out to be about this guy, or at least inspired by this guy, the Bard from Stratford Upon Avon, because, as you mayContinue reading “April’s Greatest Hits: Audio Poems”
michael jarmer 