So, how many times have you replied to a Facebook post simply begging for your special brand of snark and sarcasm and humor and then changed your mind at the last minute and deleted the whole thing before you could post your reply? You think, no, they won’t get it, or, yes, they will getContinue reading “#86: Another Stupid Human Facebook Trick”
Category Archives: Poetry
#85: The Eight Year Old Son of the American English Teacher Illustrates the Chinese Poets
It’s a teacher work-day and Mom is getting an MRI, so the boy comes with Dad to school, takes copious notes during the staff meeting and afterwards creates a mural in the classroom. He begins with the tree. When you come back from Spring Break, he says, you can do a lesson about trees. ConsiderContinue reading “#85: The Eight Year Old Son of the American English Teacher Illustrates the Chinese Poets”
#84: The Breast Cancer Poem
We pulled the mammogram call-back letter out of the mailbox on Christmas day. The rest is a blur of fearful unknowing– until the biopsy, and then waiting for the results of the biopsy, and then getting acquainted with the strangeness of saying, yes, I have cancer, or, yes, my wife has cancer. Early detection, a tinyContinue reading “#84: The Breast Cancer Poem”
#83: The American High School English Teacher Tries To Do Second Grade Math
Show your work, the instructions say, in tens and ones. Okay. Fair enough. What’s the problem? 35 – 18 = ____ When I was a kid learning to do the math, we were taught to borrow from the tens column which made a problem like this easier to do; it made one hard problem with twoContinue reading “#83: The American High School English Teacher Tries To Do Second Grade Math”
#82: The Eight Year Old Gives His Father the American English Teacher a Writing Lesson
The eight year old says, what did you do at work today? And his Dad tells him about the fishbowl discussion around the novel he’s teaching. And the boy says, during writing time at school we make hamburgers. He explains: Writing is like a hamburger. It has to start and end with the same thing,Continue reading “#82: The Eight Year Old Gives His Father the American English Teacher a Writing Lesson”
#81: The American English Teacher Addresses His Students About the Failed Lesson on Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle”
He announces a quiz over the Washington Irving story his students were supposed to have read in class on the previous day. The quiz is designed to efficiently assess what, if anything, they understood from their reading, dumb kinds of literal comprehension prompts, the type of which he rarely, if ever, gives: Explain why RipContinue reading “#81: The American English Teacher Addresses His Students About the Failed Lesson on Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle””
#79: A Minecraft Poem (Dad’s Understanding Emerges)
As I understand it, Minecraft is a computer game in which a first person player named Steve wanders through a seemingly endless outdoor landscape made entirely of blocks of things. The grass, the trees, the water, the hills, the clouds in the sky–all blocks (nothing in this world is curved, arched, or angular-slanty). In his wandering,Continue reading “#79: A Minecraft Poem (Dad’s Understanding Emerges)”
#77: What I’m Doing While My Students Are Taking Standardized Tests
I’m writing poetry, of course. Early in the semester, I’ve got no grading to do and I’m unusually planned for the upcoming unit. My students are taking a standardized writing test for which they choose one dumb prompt from four dumb prompts in each of the four and only four dumb categories of writing thatContinue reading “#77: What I’m Doing While My Students Are Taking Standardized Tests”
#76: The Obligatory Snow Poem
It’s been six years since we’ve seen snow in our neck of the woods and I was beginning to fear the end of snow forever and ever, another casualty of the warming planet. But lo and behold, it snows and snows and snows and snows. The cars are buried, the driveway become invisible, the branchesContinue reading “#76: The Obligatory Snow Poem”
#75: The InEquity NonPoem (a manifesto)
The InEquity NonPoem (a manifesto)* In my school district we’re having the conversation about equity, and mostly, we’ve been asked to focus on potential inequity between white kids and our students of color and how to minimize or abolish that inequity. Let’s do a quick little statistical analysis, shall we? Of 80 students in myContinue reading “#75: The InEquity NonPoem (a manifesto)”
michael jarmer 