michaeljarmer

Merry Christmas To Me: The Decision To Self Publish

I gave myself an early Christmas present. After years of agonizing over the issue, I have decided to do what I have always dreamed about doing, to become a published writer, to make books, to be read, to hold the thing in my hand, a language event between two covers, a physical manifestation in theContinue reading “Merry Christmas To Me: The Decision To Self Publish”

An English Teacher Doesn’t Do The Math: The Trouble With Assessment

It’s Friday and I’m not at work. It’s a furlough day, one of the 14 days cut from the school year in our district’s belt tightening regimen. I’ve got grading to do, but I’m not going to do it. Hell no. Instead, I’ll write about doing it. I want to conclude this part of myContinue reading “An English Teacher Doesn’t Do The Math: The Trouble With Assessment”

Are Grades The Devil?

Here’s a provocative thesis for you: grades are the devil. They’re evil. They’re evil because they’re oppressive and overvalued. And they’re dumb, not stupid-dumb (although, that’s kind of true), but rather mute-dumb. They don’t tell us anything. They don’t tell us what we need to know about what’s been taught or how, what’s been learned,Continue reading “Are Grades The Devil?”

Difficult Work: It’s A Good Thing They Like Me

Teachers who say that it doesn’t matter whether or not students like them have something wrong with their brains. It seems to me that one of a teacher’s greatest tools, an ace in the hole, so to speak, or, conversely, his greatest deficit, is whether or not his students like, love, or hate him. Here’sContinue reading “Difficult Work: It’s A Good Thing They Like Me”

Difficult Work: Oh, Let Me Count The Ways

Teaching is bloody difficult work. And don’t let anyone give you that romantic drivel about the three months teachers have off every year as an argument that teachers have some kind of cushy existence. I’ve seen the sticker, and even though it contains a kernel of guilty truthiness for me, I philosophically abhor the message:Continue reading “Difficult Work: Oh, Let Me Count The Ways”

Try Again, Fail Again, Fail Better

The following is the prologue for a work in progress about—you guessed it—teaching. It may become a real book some day, I hope, or, at the very least, a series of related blog entries. Prologue Imagine, it’s August, and I am in the last few days, minutes, and moments of what we call in theContinue reading “Try Again, Fail Again, Fail Better”

Hope Springs in Thermals: The Future of Education

We started playing around with malapropisms in class the other day when a student of mine asked me if I found it annoying when people say things like “it’s a doggy dog world.” Mostly, I’m amused rather than annoyed, I said. I understand that if a person has misheard a word or phrase that sheContinue reading “Hope Springs in Thermals: The Future of Education”

Synchronous Mutability: Ch-ch-changes

Inspired by an allusion in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, I recently shared with my juniors in I.B. English two different poems, both titled “Mutability”, one by Percy Shelley and the other by William Wordsworth, and then for fun I played the Bowie song about the same subject: “Changes.” It took them awhile to catch on, evenContinue reading “Synchronous Mutability: Ch-ch-changes”

Inaugural Blog

Here it goes, for better or worse. The impulse strikes and I’ve set up a blog. Whatever for? I’m a writer, first of all, and I suspect that I might have a few things to say about stuff for which I have interest and experience: teaching, writing, reading, playing music, listening to music, and beingContinue reading “Inaugural Blog”