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"Empathy is often confused with sympathy, which is a pretty extraordinary error depending on how tightly wound you are about these things (and whose definitions you stand behind). Dr. Brené Brown offers a divisive take on the difference: "Empathy fuels connections, sympathy drives disconnection." Teaching someone to feel what others feel and sit with emotions that aren't their own couldn't be any further from the inherent pattern of academics, which is always decidedly other. Teaching always begins with detachment -- learn this skill or content strand that is now apart from you. Empathy is the opposite -- it starts in the other, and finishes there without leaving. Here's one way to consider it. Without empathy, you're teaching content instead of students. The concept of teachers as primarily responsible for content distribution is a dated one, but even seeking to "engage" students misses the calling of teaching. To teach a child is to miss that child. You must understand them for who they are and where they are, not for what you hope to prepare them for. "Giving knowledge" and "engaging students" in pursuit of pre-selected knowledge are both natural processes of formal education -- and both make empathy hard to come by. So where to start doing something different? How should you "teach it"? How will you know it when you see it?"

"Most schools do not have a scope and sequence for speaking. Most teachers have never attended a district workshop about how to teach speaking: RTI, yes; bully-proofing, yes; a new math program, yes; instructional rounds, yes; speaking, no. Teacher-preparation programs do not have a class devoted to teaching listening and speaking. Education conferences don't have sessions on how to teach speaking. Yes, some schools now pay lip-service to oral communication and are hip enough to claim to value presentation skills, but such stated priorities mean little without coherent instructional support."

An interview of Stephen King in which he shares some of his teaching experiences. Jessica Lahey "asked King to expound on the parts of On Writing [she loves] most: the nuts and bolts of teaching, the geekiest details of grammar, and his ideas about how to encourage a love of language in all of our students."

"Think of a topic from your own teaching that you wish your students cared more about. It could be social justice, evolution, literature, or anything that you really care about but some students do not. Now, how can you use these 5 pedagogical moves to make your topic relevant for students? To help you think through, I have 5 tips and questions-based in literacies research-that you can ask yourself to keep your teaching relevant to your students."

"Inspired by the success of our popular syndicated series Poem-a-Day, we're pleased to present Teach This Poem.  Produced for K-12 educators, Teach This Poem features one poem a week from our online poetry collection, accompanied by interdisciplinary resources and activities designed to help teachers quickly and easily bring poetry into the classroom. "

"The Common Core State Standards--has, in some places, contributed to narrowing students' experience of writing inside school. In that contradictory and shifting environment, the NCTE Executive Committee charged a committee to update the Beliefs about the Teaching of Writing, attempting to reflect some of the historically significant changes of recent years. What follow are some of the professional principles that guide effective teaching."

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."

"A while ago, I wrote a post called Doing It Differently: Tips for Teaching Vocabulary which spells out (get it?) the process and rationale for selecting certain vocabulary words and also describes six steps for teaching new words. Here, I'm going to add to that earlier musing on this topic by offering up some must dos that took me a few years down the teaching road to figure out."

"Was I teaching argumentation to empower my students? Of course. But by teaching them to focus on finding evidence to support claims, I was achieving the opposite effect. I was making them susceptible to an epidemic of our time: the tendency to select facts that support a certain perception of reality, rather than discerning what reality is by analyzing observations and facts. With this in mind, I shifted my focus to the work that needs to happen before one makes an argument-the work of looking at the world. I designed projects that would allow students to look deeply at an issue."

How can writing change people's understanding of the world? How can it influence public opinion? How can it lead to meaningful action? In this post, which accompanies our Oct. 10 webinar, Write to Change the World: Crafting Persuasive Pieces With Help from Nicholas Kristof and the Times Op-Ed Page, we round up the best pieces we've published over the years about how to use the riches of The Times's Opinion section to teach and learn. We've sorted the ideas - many of them from teachers - into two sections. The first helps students do close-readings of editorials and Op-Eds, as well as Times Op-Docs, Op-Art and editorial cartoons. The second suggests ways for students to discover their own voices on the issues they care about. We believe they, too, can "write to change the world." Join our webinar (live on Oct. 10 or on-demand after) to learn more, and let us know in the comments how you teach these important skills."

""If visual literacy is the ability to read, write, and comprehend visual language, then looking at an image is similar to skimming a text while seeing an image is comparable to reading it." So how does someone move from looking at an image to fully seeing it? "As you begin to slow down and look closer, you will begin to make note of the different elements in the image. This is called observing- the process of building a catalog of visual elements- and is the bridge between looking and seeing." One reason why twenty-first century students need to master this type of thinking is so that they can understand the way they are affected by media. Francoise Mouly, Art Editor of the New Yorker's "TOON" book comics, thinks there's probably a lot of support for visual literacy, but that educators don't know where to start when it comes to teaching it. It's clear that teaching visual literacy is more than just using visual aids or Power Point slides. So if educators are going to try teaching the real thing, where should they begin? Here are five ideas to get you started."

To mark the 200th birthday of "Frankenstein," we have updated our older Learning Network lessons with recent Times resources to pair with the text. We also provide teaching ideas related to theme and suggest activities for students. Continue reading the main story Lesson Plans English Language Arts AUG 31 Social Studies AUG 31 Science & Math AUG 31 E.L.L. & Arts AUG 31 Current Events AUG 31 See More » "

"There are a variety of tech tools and methods out there for teaching writing that can make the process easier and more fun for both teachers and students. While not every high-tech way of teaching writing will work for every class or every student, there's enough variety that there's bound to be something for everyone."

"Employers say they have trouble finding new hires with good oral-communication skills. But relatively few regular public K-12 schools explicitly teach those skills, and even fewer teach them with real-world workplace scenarios. That mismatch doesn't bode well for young people's job prospects, or for companies searching for new talent. In survey after survey, employers say they need people who are good communicators. And they say that strong speaking skills are even more important than good reading or writing skills."

"Technology tools also have value beyond teaching the core curriculum. Here are our recommendations for research-proven tech tools that can enable more comprehensive assessment and better collaborative discussions. We also explore the best resources for teaching digital literacy in the classroom."

"English teachers, I ask that you incorporate more sci-fi into your curriculum. Librarians, bring books into your libraries that include protagonists of all shapes, shades, and perspectives. Other educators, think about the following: how other books beyond 1984 can help us examine polities; how books set in the distant future can help us teach evolutionary biology; what dystopian novels about despotic regimes can teach children about a school's zero-tolerance policies. We shouldn't be in the business of fostering mindless containers of knowledge, and science fiction can be an invaluable tool for examining and improving the learning environments we create for our students."

"Students almost universally hate close reading, and they rarely wind up understanding it anyway. Forced to pick out meaning in passages they don't fully grasp to begin with, they begin to get the idea that English class is about simply making things up and constructing increasingly circuitous arguments by way of support. So what would happen if we ditched this sacred teaching technique? For starters, we could help students read more. Speeding things up might make it easier to grasp--and appreciate--the overall arc of a book, while allowing the opportunity for real connection with the characters and plot. You can't do that at the pace of a chapter a week. Furthermore, aiming for fifteen books a year, rather than five, might expose the students to more good literature . If the goal of an English class is to improve students' grasp of language, introduce them to great literature, and--hopefully--get students excited, then there's really no downside to this approach. If a few students really want to do close reading, they can do it as an elective or jump in head first in college. Otherwise, let's chuck the concept. We gain nothing by teaching kids to hate books--and hate them s-l-o-w-l-y. "

"The longer I teach (I'm now in my 32nd year) the more I'm convinced that the best thing we can do for our students is help them learn to think for themselves. That involves explaining what critical thinking actually means - a step I fear we often skip - as well as equipping them with the requisite skills. That's why I recommend talking to students on the first day of class about critical thinking. What is it? Why is it important? How can they learn to do it? What follows is an example of my opening-day remarks. For graduate students and Ph.D.s new to teaching, if this talk resonates with you, feel free to adapt it for your own classrooms."

"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 an education landscape that dramatically deemphasizes creative expression in favor of expository writing and prioritizes the analysis of non-literary texts, high school literature teachers have to negotiate between their preferences and the way the wind is blowing. That sometimes means sacrifice, and poetry is often the first head to roll. Yet poetry enables teachers to teach their students how to write, read, and understand any text. Poetry can give students a healthy outlet for surging emotions. Reading original poetry aloud in class can foster trust and empathy in the classroom community, while also emphasizing speaking and listening skills that are often neglected in high school literature classes."