My classroom copy is copiously marked in three or four colors of highlighter and underlined and bracketed and annotated with pen and pencil seven different ways to Sunday. I’ve read and reread and reread this novel perhaps eight or nine times now, but this time I choose a clean, elegant copy over my raggedy-ass classroom copyContinue reading “#234: On Rereading a Clean Copy of Beloved”
Category Archives: Teaching
#228: On the Day After the Election
Having wept myself to sleep the night before, I got up and went to work in the school house where we met in small teams in the library to plan or do curriculum work or talk about assessments, where instead I chose to color with crayons at the table our new librarian set up forContinue reading “#228: On the Day After the Election”
#227: What We Did Today
Today we were supposed to administer the PSAT to all sophomores and some juniors, but something went terribly wrong with the test booklets and the college board rescinded the exam. Suddenly, we had a half school day to kill. Our students, most of whom were expecting a day off, were “invited” by our administrators toContinue reading “#227: What We Did Today”
Final Exam: The Visitor
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”
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”
Against a Wall: A Teacher’s Manifesto
It has been coming on for a year or two, maybe longer, but I feel it now in my 28th year of teaching more keenly than ever: I have come up against a wall. This is the condition in which I find myself professionally. It may be that things have always been this way andContinue reading “Against a Wall: A Teacher’s Manifesto”
#185: The American English Teacher Crosses Off All The Items From His To-Do List
He does it. He crosses off all the items from his to-do list. Many of the things he crosses off were things he actually did, others, not so much. But he wants them off the list so he crosses them out. Some of those unfinished-crossed-off items will end up on other to-do lists. Some othersContinue reading “#185: The American English Teacher Crosses Off All The Items From His To-Do List”
#184: The American English Teacher Makes A To-Do List
The number and the analogy may have been different, but I swear I said to at least two of my colleagues today, “Do you ever feel like a web browser with 2,879 tabs open?” And both of these colleagues said the same thing: “All. The. Time.” If I could make a catalogue of allContinue reading “#184: The American English Teacher Makes A To-Do List”
michael jarmer 