There’s laundry to fold and put away and dust bunnies to suck up and it’s raining and blowing so hard we’re sort of trapped in here. Water puddles up in the flower beds and these damn sugar ants keep crawling over my keyboard while I type up another poem. It’s Saturday, half way through, andContinue reading “#95: On the End of Spring Break”
Category Archives: Teaching
#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”
#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””
#78: The American English Teacher Wonders About the Effectiveness of Reading To His Students
My students love it when I read out loud to them. Well, that might be putting it on a bit thick. Let’s say instead that they prefer that to reading independently. I read out loud well and this guarantees at the end at least some level of certainty that every kid in the room hasContinue reading “#78: The American English Teacher Wonders About the Effectiveness of Reading To His Students”
#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”
#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)”
#74: The American English Teacher is Worried about the Burnout of His Colleagues
Perhaps, they love teaching and learning. And while they may not love children just because they’re children, they love the idea of helping young people reach their full potential, navigate the waters of young adulthood, use their minds well, think about important things, become more humanely human. It’s all noble, noble, and good. And yet, something isContinue reading “#74: The American English Teacher is Worried about the Burnout of His Colleagues”
#73: Unstuck In Time (Don’t Know Much About History)
The student reading a William Stafford poem mistakes the 1930’s for The Civil War in America—when, you know, there were electric elevators. The first impulse, if only inside of a thought bubble, is to make fun, but the second, more reflective response is a deep sadness. The kid is unstuck in time and unstuck inContinue reading “#73: Unstuck In Time (Don’t Know Much About History)”
michael jarmer 