HC English Department

"It's called the 40-Hour Teacher Workweek Club, developed by my friend, Angela Watson, an outstanding education blogger and consultant who can be found at The Cornerstone for Teachers. She has created a systematic approach to help teachers shave hours off of their work week and get a whole lot more balance in their lives."

"There are all kinds of narrators-going way beyond simple first or third person. Here's a little study of the different types."

A report out of Harvard's Graduate School of Education about the damaging impact of college admission requirements and the ways they can change to "inspire concern for others."

"I want my students to feel secure in the knowledge that nobody is beyond criticism (even their teacher), and that the bigger challenge is developing the good sense to acknowledge and successfully respond to feedback. Along those lines, I also offer the suggestions below about teaching writing:"

At present, the Syllabus Explorer is mostly a tool for counting how often texts are assigned over the past decade. There is something for everyone here. The traditional Western canon dominates the top 100, with Plato's "Republic" at No. 2, "The Communist Manifesto" at No. 3, and "Frankenstein" at No. 5, followed by Aristotle's "Ethics," Hobbes's "Leviathan," Machiavelli's "The Prince," "Oedipus" and "Hamlet." Writing guides are also well represented, with "The Elements of Style" by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White at No. 1, as are major textbooks, led by Neil Campbell's "Biology" at No. 4. What about fiction from the past 50 years? Toni Morrison's "Beloved" ranks first, at No. 43, followed by William Gibson's "Neuromancer," Art Spiegelman's "Maus," Ms. Morrison's "The Bluest Eye," Sandra Cisneros's "The House on Mango Street," Anne Moody's "Coming of Age in Mississippi," Leslie Marmon Silko's "Ceremony" and Alice Walker's "The Color Purple." Top articles? Garrett Hardin's "The Tragedy of the Commons" and Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History." "

"When it comes to creating a community of writers, there is no perfect formula. Trial and error, as well as a few specific steps, may help you begin the process in your classroom, no matter what subject matter or age you teach. Like every other worthy endeavor, writing requires practice. That's why from day one, students should see writing as an integral part of your class. You might even consider incorporating writing into your ice-breaker. Have your students mimic a poem, do a random autobiography, or draft scavenger hunt questions. Let students experience variety and choice. They shouldn't craft only formal, academic papers in your class. They should see that writing fits a variety of purposes and patterns. Online blogs, creative writing, written instructions, and other forms of written expression should be part of your curriculum."

"Perez says when students are engaged, predicting answers, talking with one another and sharing with the class in ways that follow safe routines and practices, they not only achieve more but they also act out less. And everyone, including the teacher, has more fun. "If we don't have their attention, what's the point?" Perez asked an audience at a Learning and the Brain conference on mindsets. She's a big proponent of brain breaks and getting kids moving around frequently during the day. She reminded educators that most kids' attention spans are about as long in minutes as their age."

"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."

"In the middle of the school year, I always regret my choice of becoming an AP and Honors English teacher. Not because I hate to teach, but because I'm always swimming in essays that I have to grade. In order to accommodate the load, I adapted the elementary way of thinking and formed a writers' workshop for my own classroom. Once they participate in the workshop, students are able to learn how to revise their own essays. Because of this, the time it takes for me to grade essays is literally cut in half. Suggestions for Implementing a Writers' Workshop in Your Classroom"

"Many of my first-year college students have been battle-trained in writing thesis statements by the time I get them. But rather than opening doors to thought, the thesis quickly closes them. Instead of offering a guiding hand, the thesis carries a baseball bat, muscling its way into writers' thoughts and beating information into submission. What I'm talking about is the thug thesis, the bully who hangs with the five-paragraph theme and similar forms of deductive writing. Unfortunately, this thesis-an anathema to academic inquiry-is the one most students know best. I'm not arguing against teaching students how to write a thesis statement. What bothers me is how thoroughly this convention dominates our discussions about what is meant by strong academic writing. The thesis has been hogging the bed, and it's time to make more room for its tossing-and-turning partner in academic inquiry: the question."

"What teachers say they really need isn't free food and a once-a-year exercise in flattery. What they want, they say, is for their profession to be respected in a way that accepts educators as experts in their field. They want adequate funding for schools, decent pay, valid assessment, job protections and a true voice in policy making."

"The excerpt below is from the book "Building a Community of Self-Motivated Learners: Strategies to Help Students Thrive in School and Beyond," by Larry Ferlazzo. This excerpt is from the chapter entitled "I Still Want to Know: How Can You Get Students More Interested in Reading and Writing?"

We grown-ups often assume that children are oblivious to our money talk, ignorant of our budget woes and uninterested in how adults make financial decisions. Better to protect them from all that for as long as possible, right? But the best entries of this year's crop of college application essays about money prove that they are watching and listening - always - and picking up every little thing by osmosis."

"The move from middle to high school is proving to be a critical transition, one in which students must deal with great changes in academics, responsibility and social structure all at the same time. Recent research showing a strong correlation between failing classes in ninth grade and not graduating puts an even stronger emphasis on making sure the eighth-to-ninth-grade transition goes smoothly - and puts added pressure on the 14-year-olds making their way from a more nurturing environment to the "Wild, Wild West." Formal structures for helping students transition smoothly appear to be relatively uncommon, leaving the work to already overburdened counselors and families, or sometimes no one but the students themselves. Yet two particular standout programs - one in Boston, one in St. Paul, Minnesota - are trying to help connect the dots for freshmen, and may serve as a model for other schools and systems to create a strong bridge over the rough waters from middle to high school."

"Unlike most American high schools, student leadership at Harwood Union High School isn't limited to campaigns for cleaner bathrooms or better cafeteria food. Here, teenagers are deeply involved in shaping the pillars of school life, from the daily class schedule to the styles of teaching and learning that work best for them. Aided by community groups that have trained them in leadership techniques, young people and adults at Harwood have forged an unusually strong and equal partnership over the past eight years. They developed decisionmaking processes that put students at the heart of the biggest school decisions. When new teachers are hired, report cards are redesigned, or honors classes are revamped, students are at the table, debating, sharing research, listening, and voting. That work has made this unassuming school in Vermont's Green Mountains a national model for educators who believe students deserve the right to play a central role in creating their school experience."

"The balanced move is best exemplified by a famous catchphrase spoken by Muhammad Ali as a young boxer: "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." This compound sentence (made up of two equally important main clauses) balances like a seesaw on the pivot of that comma and gains extra strength from its parallel structure, equal syntactical units to express meaning of equal weight. The mirror images go like this: imperative verb, preposition, article, noun. Even with all these, the two halves aren't precisely equal. The difference between butterfly and bee - the first word long and lyrical, the second short and sharp - creates both rhythm and contrast. Ali is both the beauty and the beast. Balance, sentence structure, verb forms, emphatic word order, parallelism, even the history of the English language (Anglo Saxon meets Norman French) are working their magic in this iconic line, coming from a man who was sometimes disparaged as the Louisville Lip."

"In a recent New York Times interview, marking the release of his charming picture-book Outlaw Pete (public library), Springsteen shares the books that shaped his music and his mind, from poetry to philosophy to children's books - an eclectic reading list spanning numerous genres and sensibilities, life stages and moods. (Favorite childhood book: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; last book that made him laugh: Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land; last book that made him cry: Cormac McCarthy's The Road)."

Springsteen "expects a lot of his listeners. He puts in some pretty subtle references to other creative works. And if the listener gets the reference, it may actually change how they look at the song a little bit, or even how they look at what Springsteen is referring to."

"How can we honor this process and make school writing about discovery? Instead of leading students to feel that school writing must be separate from their lived realities, how can writing allow students to find meaning through a process of creating? At Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, where I teach, we adopted common language to help us unify our writing instruction. Throughout the four years of high school, we emphasize thesis statements and the crafting of arguments. While I believe there is much value to this approach, I've also come to believe that we should do more to help young people develop their writing craft."