michaeljarmer

Educational Fantasy #3: Two Teachers in Every Classroom

In 1984 and 1992, respectively, Ted Sizer, in his seminal works Horace’s Compromise and Horace’s School, argued that there was such a thing in a teacher’s class load as an optimal number of students for educational gains and teacher effectiveness. That number was 75. That’s right. 75 students per teacher. In those days, early in my career, English teachersContinue reading “Educational Fantasy #3: Two Teachers in Every Classroom”

Educational Fantasy #2: Real and Effective Interventions and Alternatives for Students Who Do Not Function Well in School

Public schools take all comers, don’t they? And that’s as it should be. Those of us who support and desire a healthy public school system believe that this is a fundamental principle that makes a democracy viable, that all our citizens deserve equal access to an educational experience that will grow them into literate, responsible,Continue reading “Educational Fantasy #2: Real and Effective Interventions and Alternatives for Students Who Do Not Function Well in School”

Educational Fantasy #1: The Gradeless Classroom

This spring I have the good fortune of having a competent and enthusiastic teacher intern who is taking responsibility for a number of my classes. It has afforded me some time: some time to do especially good work for the students that remain solely my responsibility, some time to write a poem or two orContinue reading “Educational Fantasy #1: The Gradeless Classroom”

#282: On the Last Day of National Poetry Writing Month, The Poet Speaks of Things that Happen Over and Over Again

Days go by, and they keep going by constantly pulling you into the future. –Laurie Anderson. For starters, days go by one right after another, but today, during meditation, I held my father’s hand one last time before they wheeled him into surgery on the eve of his last day on the planet 7Continue reading “#282: On the Last Day of National Poetry Writing Month, The Poet Speaks of Things that Happen Over and Over Again”

#281: Gin

Today, from napowrimo, the suggested prompt is to take a favorite poem and find a very specific, concrete noun in it. After choosing the word, put the original poem away and spend five minutes free-writing associations – other nouns, adjectives, etc. Then use the original word and the results of the free-writing as the building blocks for a new poem. PerhapsContinue reading “#281: Gin”

#280: A Mostly Unrhymed Food Dipodic at the Close of Teacher Appreciation Week

This week for teacher appreciation, they bring us junk to eat, like chips, and candy, bread, pancakes, syrup, none of which I can eat, sadly. Yesterday, kids wheeled in wagons full of goodies into classrooms from which I could only choose bottled water. Somehow, this week I don’t quite feel the love; appreciation is notContinue reading “#280: A Mostly Unrhymed Food Dipodic at the Close of Teacher Appreciation Week”

#279: The English Teacher Reveals the Writing Prompt for the Day

The English teacher reveals the writing prompt for the day and tells his students to start writing and one student doesn’t have his notebook and while it’s supposed to be quiet another kid tells the kid without a notebook that he saw him leave it inside the lunchroom and the notebookless kid doesn’t believe him andContinue reading “#279: The English Teacher Reveals the Writing Prompt for the Day”

#278: When I Was Away, Before I Was Born, I Have Never Been

I attended a writing workshop last weekend taught by the Oregon Poet Laureate Emeritus Paulann Petersen where I was asked to participate in a generative process very much unlike the process I am used to in my own creative work. It was a very particular kind of brainstorm activity she called “priming.” Now, as aContinue reading “#278: When I Was Away, Before I Was Born, I Have Never Been”

#277: The Topography of Our Intimate Being

The Topography of Our Intimate Being is a box or a series of boxes. I’m in there, over four decades on hundreds of scattered pages, in a drawer, on a shelf, the most recent version of myself in a box on my writing desk, or, where the oldest pages are stored, in bins in theContinue reading “#277: The Topography of Our Intimate Being”

#277: Dog and Bunny Medieval Marginalia

I A dog astride a bunny is jousting to the death against a bunny astride a snail, battling while balancing precariously on a thorned tendril of a rose bush. The dog appears joyful in the face of this encounter, but both the bunny he is riding and the bunny he is battling look surprised, concerned,Continue reading “#277: Dog and Bunny Medieval Marginalia”