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"At EL Education, we believe that this is best done consciously and intentionally. We are unafraid to say that teachers and schools shape student character. We specify what we believe they should work towards: students who are not just effective learners, but also ethical people, and active contributors to a better world. We believe that this is supported when educators elevate student voice and leadership and model a schoolwide culture of respect, compassion, honesty, integrity, and kindness. In times of crisis, small-scale or large, this also means modeling courage in standing up for those values, and standing against racism, injustice, acts of hate, and the undermining of public education. One unheralded but powerful possibility is this: giving students real material to engage with and supporting them to do work that matters to them. This is what helps students become ethical adults who contribute to a better world. In EL Education schools, this deeper learning is the daily fare of classrooms. And, it's what empowers them to engage in civil debate. If students are fearful about what may happen to them or their loved ones, we can help them research what has actually been said or proposed, and what is possible according to the U.S. Constitution as it has so far been interpreted. We can help them respond in ways that build their own agency: writing letters, like students at World of Inquiry, or making videos and organizing actions like the Melrose Leadership Academy Peace and Kindness March."

"Forty-four years later, I wonder how he would have responded to my paper, and I am still singing the five-paragraph-theme blues, having fought the template's rigid lessons ever since.  I also know, from what scores of college students have reported to me (and from students Jennifer Gray interviewed), that it also gets in the way of other writers. Conversely, students tell me that what interests them in writing is teachers engaging them in real composing problems: Giving choice in topic; experimenting with different kinds of writing for a variety of audiences and purposes; and providing opportunities for thoughtful, in-process feedback from multiple sources-teachers, parents, peers, and others. (See post by  Ken Lindblom for more suggestions.) And the more students are interested in writing, the more motivated they are to improve, just as my neighbor who spends hours, weeks, and months on his skateboard wants to get better at his skateboarding skills-falling off, sometimes dramatically, but always getting back up and trying again.  He's interested in skateboarding, is willing to concentrate on that, and has gotten pretty good.  In the same way, if we get our students interested in their writing, they too will develop their writing skills.  From amazing teachers like Donald Graves and Donald Murray, Nancie Atwell, Kelly Gallagher, and Penny Kittle, we have a wealth of ideas about how schools can nurture joy and purpose in novice writers and how we can bring authentic writing experiences into our classrooms."

It's often hard to justify watching a two-hour film when there's so much else that has to be done. But, what about an eight-minute film? That's the average length of our Film Club features, and these short documentary films do much more than just entertain. They challenge assumptions and offer new perspectives. They tell stories that often remain hidden, and introduce us to people and places foreign to us. As with other short texts like stories, poems and articles, mini-documentary films can stimulate discussion, debate, thinking and writing. And, they can serve as a refreshing break from print media to help students explore curriculum themes and practice important literacy skills. Below, we present eight films we've featured in our Film Club series that have already captured students' and teachers' attention. In addition, we offer practical teaching ideas, along with responses from students and teachers, for how you can use these documentaries, or films like them, to teach close reading and critical thinking skills."

"The Write-a-Thon grew its roots in 2015, during a little conversation between my school district's (Robbinsville, New Jersey) Superintendent, Dr. Steven Mayer and myself. The crux of the conversation was, "How can we teach teenagers to see writing as an exercise in self-discovery and authenticity not just a forced activity aligned with the harbingers of school?" So we talked. We listened. We brainstormed. And 3 months later the first Write-a-Thon was held in my classroom. A 2-hour writing event that afforded students the opportunity to write, to tell their story. The event hosted 13 writers including Dr. Mayer and received donations and support from my student's parents, faculty and my own friends and family. When concluded, the Write-a-Thon raised $1,300 for the Special Olympics of New Jersey. As I was planning the second Write-a-Thon, Dr. Mayer was tragically killed. The May event was held in his honor. An event that began with me, fighting tears, recounting our little brainstorming session and how though he is physically gone, his story, his passion is alive and well. The heart of the Write-a-Thon is simple - show up and tell your story. This week, the fourth installment of the Write-a-Thon had 30 student writers, ranging from 7th to 12th grade. The event hosted a $500 college scholarship essay challenge and was filmed by the Emmy winning "Classroom Close-up NJ" and will be featured in October 2017 episode."

"While individual efforts are valuable, students can learn the skills of collaborating on civic issues by working together as a whole class. Here are the five broad steps they should follow: Identify issues important in their lives and community, and decide on one to address. Research the chosen issue and decide how to change or improve the situation. Plan an action, including determining a goal for change; identifying who or what body in the community has power to make the change; and deciding how to approach that person or those people. Carry out the action through letters, talks, meetings with officials, policy proposals, and activities, depending on the specific goals of the project. Reflect on the effort when it is over in order to understand their successes, challenges, and ways to continue learning in the future. Two features are especially crucial to making the experience authentic and empowering. First, students must own the key choices and decisions and figure out solutions to problems themselves, so they discover that they can do this. The teacher facilitates the work, of course, but leaves as much of the decision-making as possible to the students. Second, the work should culminate in some action focused on change in the school or community. It's not enough to just talk about change, practice mock legislatures, or serve in a soup kitchen (as valuable as these activities may be). Only when students see adults listening to them with respect, do they realize they have a voice and can make a difference in their world. Their efforts may not always succeed, but in being heard they come to value the studying, reading, writing and planning that they have done."

"Language merely reflects our way of trying to make sense of the world. - Frank Smith Frank Smith (1982) says 'writing touches every part of our lives'. One of the first reasons we write is because it is a tool for communication in culture. It gives us the ability the share information over time and space with multiple individuals (explaining, recounting & opinion). It can also be used as a permanent record or as a statement e.g. in history, geography  & science genres. The third cultural aspect for writing is artistry (narrative and poetry). Finally, there is also the personal aspect to writing. Writing allows us all to reflect, express our perceptions of self, to socially dream or to be critical (memoir). By writing, we find out what we know; what we think. Ultimately though, writing is a means for us to express ourselves in the world, make sense of the world or impose ourselves upon it. The question now is why do children write at school? For these purposes? - Not often. There is a massive discrepancy between the writing done in the real-world and that of the classroom. Donald Graves says 'all children want to write'. It is just a case of allowing them to write about the things they are interested in. As Frank Smith says, 'all children can write if they can speak it.' If they can talk about it, they can write it down. The transmission of narrow decontextualized writing skills; that English is just a formal system to be learnt. The insistence on task-orientated writing. The insistence on teacher-chosen writing tasks. The insistence on the use of external stimulus (literature units, film-clips, topic-writing) at the expense of children's knowledge, interests, loves, talents and idiosyncrasies. The formal rather than functional teaching of grammar. These examples embody the 'commonsense' assumptions which claim an authority which is supposedly natural and unshakable. Writing in classrooms at present isn't seen by children as important

"In this Teaching Channel video, McComb leads a class period where he's trying to give individual students feedback as they work and not only after they've turned in their assignments. He demonstrates how he tries to hold back from giving them the answers, instead guiding them with questions, making sure they are aware of and are using resources, and crucially allowing them the time and space to think through what he's asking and arrive at a solution on their own. McComb is doing a lot in this lesson. He's helping a few students work on a specific skill they lack; he's checking in on students working independently; he's conferencing with students who are having individual problems; and he's trying not to just give students the language that will improve their writing. McComb calls this practice a structure that's flexible and allows for short cycles of work that give him an opportunity to address problems and give real-time feedback. He's hoping this new approach to writing feedback will not only improve his students' work, but will also help them to become more independent learners."

"Zoe Roben, an English teacher at Harvest Collegiate High School in Manhattan and enthusiastic Moth listener, wanted students at her small public high school to have a more sophisticated understanding of how to tell personal stories. So in the fall, she invited Moth educators to Harvest Collegiate to carry out an afterschool workshop with nine kids, while she acted as the teacher liaison. For eight weeks, the students and adult supervisors brainstormed and practiced telling their stories, and at the end delivered their tales before the school and again at a Moth office, where they were recorded. The theme was courage. Students told stories about kitchen disasters, lost hamsters and minor acts of adolescent agitation, like chopping off hair. Anxious at first about their ability to perform, students came to embrace the experience, Roben said. "They were glowing at the end, with the feeling that they could get up in front of an audience and do something this big," she said. "It was knowing they had something to say, and experiencing their own voice as something valuable," she added."

"Classrooms in the U.S. often focus most attention on literacy and math, largely because those skills are considered foundational and are tested. However most people will also need to communicate their thoughts and ideas to other people through oral language, and yet effective communication strategies are often not taught with the same precision and structure as other parts of the curriculum. School 21, a public school in London has made "oracy" a primary focus of everything they do. From the earliest grades on up teachers support students to find their voice, express differing opinions politely, and challenge one another's thinking. These are skills called for in the Common Core, but can be hard to find in many classrooms because students haven't been taught how to make "turn and talks" truly effective. The Edutopia team visited School 21 and captured some amazing videos of students practicing their communication skills with support from teachers."

"Low-stakes writing is a tool to help students build comfort with sharing and developing their thoughts through writing. A defining element of low-stakes writing is how it's graded -- the grade doesn't carry a lot of weight. This removes much of the pressure from having to do the assignment a certain way, putting value instead on student thought, expression, and learning, rather than punctuation, grammar, or getting a correct answer the first time. "The most important thing about it for me is that it's not censored, and it's not too highly structured," explains James Kobialka, a UPCS seventh-grade science teacher. "Students aren't being told exactly what to do. They're allowed to have freedom, and they're not so worried about it that they try to write what they think they want me to see, or that they're tempted to plagiarize. It's about them getting their own ideas down, and then being able to interact with those ideas, change them, and revise them if they're not correct." Low-stakes writing: Increases students' comfort with expressing their ideas and empowers student voice Creates more investment and ownership in student learning Prepares students for high-stakes writing and testing Is adaptable for any subject Allows for differentiation"

"Start with simple assignments that are an easy transition from what you and your students are already familiar with. Try blogging, then build to more complex projects like podcasting or video storytelling. In addition to concentrating on the ideas and the writing itself, try to create situations where the students' writing takes advantage of the medium and the connectedness of the internet. Some criteria I use to develop assignments include: student agency engagement and passion audience impact beyond the classroom authoring skills and experiences needed for success outside of academia collaboration and connectivity with other authors and audience members experiences authoring in a variety of media other than text When we develop our writing assignments, we must ultimately come back to one main concern: purpose. Why are we giving specific types of writing assignments and how do they help our students convey their ideas in ways that resonate with their audience?"

"Teaching Mockingbird suggests a central question around which a class's study of Harper Lee's novel can be organized: What factors influence our moral growth? What kinds of experiences help us learn how to judge right from wrong?  As students read and reflect on the novel, they return to this question and can begin to make deeper and broader connections between the novel and their own moral and ethical lives. They begin by considering the pivotal moments in their lives that shape who they are and their senses of right and wrong.  Then they analyze how the characters in To Kill A Mockingbird change over the course of the story, identifying pivotal moments in the story that influence how the characters think about morality and justice.  The complete Teaching Mockingbird guide also introduces models of moral development that have emerged from the field of developmental psychology, which students can use as the basis for even deeper character analysis."

""The act of writing is more powerful than people think," Peterson says. Most people grapple at some time or another with free-floating anxiety that saps energy and increases stress. Through written reflection, you may realize that a certain unpleasant feeling ties back to, say, a difficult interaction with your mother. That type of insight, research has shown, can help locate, ground and ultimately resolve the emotion and the associated stress. At the same time, "goal-setting theory" holds that writing down concrete, specific goals and strategies can help people overcome obstacles and achieve. Peterson wondered whether writing could be shown to affect student motivation. He created an undergraduate course called Maps of Meaning. In it, students complete a set of writing exercises that combine expressive writing with goal-setting. Students reflect on important moments in their past, identify key personal motivations and create plans for the future, including specific goals and strategies to overcome obstacles. Peterson calls the two parts "past authoring" and "future authoring.""

"Voice is perhaps one of writer's most important traits and also one of the hardest to discover. Because you already have a unique voice, you just have to nail it down on the page. Record yourself telling a story. There are details you use, the way you move your body (or don't), your facial expressions, the way you move your hands (or don't), all of that is specific to you. It's part of your voice and getting that down on the page is so very important to you as a writer. The only way to uncover your voice is to write and read a lot, then write and read some more. Record yourself telling your stories and transcribe them. Consider the stories that matter to you and why and how that shapes how you tell them. Consider what's more powerful, the way you tell a story to your friends or when you write it down? Why? Who told you that there was only one way to write and real writers, established writers, writers who mean anything, write this way?"

"Now, I know that teaching poetry, in many of our minds, is akin to a nonswimmer diving into the deep end, blindfolded. I also know that teaching poetry is often a balancing act between the technical aspects of form and the creative aspects of writing, and that reciting rules and stressing form can stifle creativity or turn students (and teachers) off of poetry. So, I've devised a method that guarantees your students will get on board. It's worked for me in high schools and summer teen programs, in Virginia and Singapore, in libraries and juvenile detention facilities. The truth is, we all know how to swim; we've just forgotten how much we like it. This is a friendly reminder. Want to get your students excited about poetry? Try love."

"Concept fuels mix of confusion, frustration, and optimism Personalized learning seems like a simple concept-basically, customize teaching and learning to students' individual academic strengths and weaknesses and even their personal interests. But the reality is that the concept is creating quite a bit of confusion and frustration in the K-12 world. What is (and isn't) personalized learning? How much control should students have over when, how, and what they learn? And what about the potential overuse of digital tools in personalized learning programs?"

"Pace yourself. You don't have to cover everything. If they don't read that play by Shakespeare, they will still live to be fine old people. Don't put too much pressure on yourself. Don't put too much pressure on your students. It's not just a matter of taking what I do offline online. I've shortened my units because of the coronavirus. I have a lot of working parents; now they have kids at home. I can't ask them to do a 25-page paper on pronouns in Shakespeare. Figure out what's really essential for learning, and what can be let go in the next three months. For my composition students, for example, my primary focus is always helping them express ideas clearly and coherently. I'm less concerned about the genre of writing or how long it is. I can do that a paragraph at a time. For my more advanced students, they need to learn research skills: how to locate, evaluate, and use information. Online learning offers great opportunities for that, including with what's going on in the news right now. For my literature students, my emphasis is helping them understand stories that come from cultures other than theirs. Are they able to see the humanity and connections across the stories? That's essential. Whether they remember all of the characters and the authors-that's not essential. This is a great time to individualize instruction and have students work at different paces. You don't want 100-120 papers coming at you all at one time. Spread it out, and it will keep you from getting short-tempered with your students. I've got some students who won't turn on a camera in their house. They don't want you to see inside their house for various reasons. Be aware of it; be very sensitive and careful with human beings. Be prepared to let your students teach you. Students can be great help to us. Be each other's tech support."

"The 10 young Black writers in this project - talented poets from Oakland, Houston, St. Louis, Chicago, New York, Nashville, New Orleans and Los Angeles - are using the tools at their disposal, whatever they have. There's the "Black vernacular" of Akilah Toney's poem, the unshakable end rhymes of Alora Young, the expansive lines of Nyarae Francis's sestina and the stunning yet harrowing fragments of Samuel Getachew's "justice for -." These fledgling June Jordans and Robert Haydens, who are youth poets laureate and organizers and rappers, examine and fight back against an America that threatens to swallow them. They redefine themselves ("I wish I understood what it is like to be a black girl / To know myself like a dictionary definition," begins Madison Petaway in her poem) and cite their own wisdom and traditions, even building their own gods ("I've come to learn that my Grandmother's God is not my own," Jacoby Collins writes)."

Interesting advice on literary analysis essay writing: "There should be more or less of a jumble in your head or on your note paper after the first time and even after the second. Much that you will think of in connection will come to nothing and be wasted. But some of it ought to go together under one idea. That idea is the thing to write on and write into the title at the head of your paper… One idea and a few subordinate ideas - [the trick is] to have those happen to you as you read and catch them - not let them escape you… The sidelong glance is what you depend on. You look at your author but you keep the tail of your eye on what is happening over and above your author in your own mind and nature."

"All over the country, local school board members, who are typically volunteers or serve for small stipends, have indeed been placed on the front line of a national culture war. Protestors are mobilizing against masks, vaccines, LGBTQ rights, removing police from schools, and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. In early October, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland directed the FBI to meet with state and local authorities to create "strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff." BACK TO SCHOOL: LIVE UPDATES She Joined The School Board To Serve Her Community. Now She's In The Crossfire NPR spoke to school board members in California, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, in addition to Watkins and a fellow board member in Georgia. All of them told similar stories: of being yelled at in meetings that are sometimes brought to a halt entirely; receiving threatening letters; being followed to their cars; and being photographed or filmed."