So I wrote a little blog post some many months ago now. It was 2000 words long. It was a furious little rant about how one of the books I teach in 11th grade IB English, Kalpa Imperial by Angélica Gorodischer, was being removed from, or at least being considered for removal from, or, asContinue reading “Teaching Controversial Texts: In Defense of Kalpa Imperial by Angélica Gorodischer”
Category Archives: Teaching
#66: The American English Teacher Doesn’t Want His Student To See Him Using Facebook
So, the student stops by the house of his English teacher to pick up a younger member of his family who’s taking music lessons from the English teacher’s wife, and he comes into the study to say hello and the English teacher minimizes his Facebook page so that the student doesn’t know that this isContinue reading “#66: The American English Teacher Doesn’t Want His Student To See Him Using Facebook”
#61: The American English Teacher Makes An Epic Gaffe While Trying To Be Inclusive
He’s teaching a poem during the study of 17th century American literature by Sor Juana Inéz de la Cruz, a brilliant poet, Catholic nun, living in what was then called New Spain, and crafting these beautiful poems about the power of intellect and about surviving a broken heart. He’s teaching one of those poems, yes,Continue reading “#61: The American English Teacher Makes An Epic Gaffe While Trying To Be Inclusive”
#60: The American Teenager Claims The Puritans Were Speaking Old English
The American Teenager Claims The Puritans Were Speaking Old English He wants to say the Puritans were speaking or writing in Old English; a pet peave of mine, this calling by students Old English what is essentially their language, modern English, a language they don’t really know that well after all. But they know evenContinue reading “#60: The American Teenager Claims The Puritans Were Speaking Old English”
#58: Classroom Management
A student entered the classroom of my colleague with a rat. Really. The rat was traveling visibly underneath the boy’s clothing, around the stomach and the chest, up and down the sleeves and nestling in the wide birth of his hoodie hood. It made a girl scream. The lesson, whatever it was, is inevitably interrupted.Continue reading “#58: Classroom Management”
#57: This Is Happening
This Is Happening: Today, in my first official act as reverend, I will officiate the wedding of two former students of mine. I have written some words for, rehearsed and supped with these two bright stars from some deep place earlier in my career some 15 years back. And I wonder at this turn ofContinue reading “#57: This Is Happening”
#54: The School Year Begins with a Crash of the Hard Drive
The School Year Begins with a Crash of the Hard Drive on which my entire life’s work as a teacher was “saved.” My technology guy, bless him, was able to retrieve nearly every last god-forsaken item– except any kind of organizational feature previously attached. So all perhaps one thousand assorted folders, documents, presentations, audio files,Continue reading “#54: The School Year Begins with a Crash of the Hard Drive”
#53: On the Last Day of Summer Break
On the Last Day of Summer Break I’m home alone, cleaning house, sweeping, dusting, mopping, emptying the trash, doing small errands that have been waiting a long time, like those framed drawings of France that needed hanging, and that boat painting; now they’re up. I put away all the piles of rags and brushes andContinue reading “#53: On the Last Day of Summer Break”
The Going-Back-To-Work Blues Is A Real Thing
20 blog entries later, and the summer break comes to a close. Teachers report back to their schools in my district on Monday. Time to take stock. Time to look ahead. It’s been a strong summer. I blogged, I wrote fiction, became an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church, agreed to marry a coupleContinue reading “The Going-Back-To-Work Blues Is A Real Thing”
A Talk at the 30 Year High School Reunion
Note: I include this as a post on my blogsite mostly for those classmates of mine who would like to see it. Don’t know if it will make sense for other readers–parts of it will, perhaps, others not so much. For example, to get the opening gag, you’d have to know that I now teachContinue reading “A Talk at the 30 Year High School Reunion”
michael jarmer 