Please excuse my absence. After 30 poems over the 30 days of April, one needs a little rest. But on top of all that, I’ve been having a transformative experience. On Sunday, May 20, I came down from the mountaintop. My hair turned white and now looks blown back by a great force of energyContinue reading “Diary of an English Teacher in His Penultimate Year: June 12, 2018”
Category Archives: Education
#310: An Elegy for the Essay in English
I read his essay out loud the way it appeared on the page. In about five hundred words the student used two paragraphs, and, beyond a single period at the end of the first paragraph, used no commas, no semi-colons or colons, no dashes, no quotation marks, and no more periods, not even at theContinue reading “#310: An Elegy for the Essay in English”
#303: The American English Teacher Strategizes for Kids Who Don’t Read
He assigns the pages and when class convenes he understands in short order that only a few kids have bothered to do the reading. The age old dilemma of the high school English teacher: what can be done if kids won’t read, not can’t, but won’t or don’t? Reading everything in class, either out loud or in silence willContinue reading “#303: The American English Teacher Strategizes for Kids Who Don’t Read”
#294: How Woke?
Substitute plans laid out in plain sight and handouts ready that should keep my sophomores honest and hard at work, I head off this morning to a professional workshop in a district populated by mostly white kids and staffed by mostly white adults to have brave conversations about race. Even while the graduation rate forContinue reading “#294: How Woke?”
#284: The American English Teacher Tries Not to Be Afraid While Doing His Job
Two nights ago I woke up at 3 a.m. and could not go back to sleep. It was not a nightmare that woke me. Just some disturbance in the force that momentarily stirred me from slumber. Immediately upon opening my eyes, though, a waking nightmare: I was thinking about those kids in Florida, and I wasContinue reading “#284: The American English Teacher Tries Not to Be Afraid While Doing His Job”
Diary of an English Teacher in His Penultimate Year: February 15, 2018
Today I wrapped up three full days of sitting with my senior IB English students, listening to their oral commentaries on a poem by Seamus Heaney and holding discussions with them about Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and Toni Morrison’s Beloved. I sat with almost 25 students, just me and the kid, one at a time, forContinue reading “Diary of an English Teacher in His Penultimate Year: February 15, 2018”
Diary of an English Teacher in His Penultimate Year: December 9, 2017
I realize now that it might be possible to misunderstand the title of this blog series. I just want to make clear right out of the gate that our narrator is not talking about his penultimate year on the planet. Nope. He’s pretty healthy, save for some high blood pressure (which he is working toContinue reading “Diary of an English Teacher in His Penultimate Year: December 9, 2017”
Diary of an English Teacher in His Penultimate Year: December 5, 2017
And now for something completely different. I’ve been doing this “Penultimate Year” series now since August, and typically post about once a month, but today the urge to scribble arrived for the second consecutive day. Today, the day after my birthday, felt more like a birthday. I mean, I celebrated a little bit last nightContinue reading “Diary of an English Teacher in His Penultimate Year: December 5, 2017”
Diary of an English Teacher in His Penultimate Year: December 4, 2017
It’s a Monday and it’s my birthday. None of my students knew and I didn’t bother to tell them. It was a rough day. Last night, I stayed up too late. This morning, and all day really, I was suffering as a result. My cold’s getting better, I think, or, at least, no worse. ButContinue reading “Diary of an English Teacher in His Penultimate Year: December 4, 2017”
Diary of an English Teacher in His Penultimate Year: November 29, 2017
I am feeling under the weather. But I am not so far gone as to have to call in sick. I need to keep resting, continue with my abstinence from adult beverages for a couple more days, try not to worry. I got some paperwork from the Oregon Public Employee Retirement System, a request forContinue reading “Diary of an English Teacher in His Penultimate Year: November 29, 2017”
michael jarmer 