Let’s say, you’re beginning class for your seniors in Creative Writing on the very last day of the school year, their final exam. Let’s say you have asked them to do this relatively simple but quite risky thing, to read a piece of their fiction out loud to the class. Okay. And let’s say thatContinue reading “Final Exam: The Visitor”
Category Archives: Education
The Great Student Growth Goal Debacle
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”
#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”
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”
Melt The Guns
For those of you who have been following my project of listening to my music collection from A to Z and writing reflections on each album: no, I am not jumping ahead from D to X. Instead, inspired by a friend of mine posting this tune in Facebook on the day we learned of yetContinue reading “Melt The Guns”
#180: Another “Workable” Solution
It turns out that the brave colleague who volunteered to teach five preparations in order to relieve another colleague of a student load of 217 did not, after all, have to take on five preparations. Instead, two of her small classes were swapped straight across with two of the other teacher’s giant classes. These movesContinue reading “#180: Another “Workable” Solution”
#179: A “Workable” Solution
Today the English Department got together to figure out how to relieve a colleague of a student load of 217. That’s all I really have to say. The fact alone is enough. One of our colleagues was assigned 217 students. The obvious solution, hiring another teacher, is apparently out of the question. A school is given soContinue reading “#179: A “Workable” Solution”
A Talk at the 2015 Rex Putnam High School Graduation Ceremony
Class of 2015: Good morning! Many of you have seen a music video on youtube in which a young man wearing a yellow suit, a blue bow tie, and beige converse high tops, bounces up and down, gestures maniacally, and moves rhythmically in a way that sort of resembles “dancing;” his eye make-up is sweatingContinue reading “A Talk at the 2015 Rex Putnam High School Graduation Ceremony”
#175: Arts and Crafts
We’re studying Romeo and Juliet and even though kids are, for the most part, up on their feet with scripts instead of sitting at their desks reading out loud, it’s a herculean struggle for them to read with any accuracy, enthusiasm, or understanding, and the kid who insists on playing Benvolio every single time alsoContinue reading “#175: Arts and Crafts”
To Test Or Not To Test
The powers that be, the federal government, the state government, school district superintendents, local school boards and administrators tell us that our students must be tested. Why must they be tested? They tell us our students must be tested so that data in the form of scores and percentages can be published, so that schoolsContinue reading “To Test Or Not To Test”
michael jarmer 