HC English Department

"Entries for the Student Podcast Challenge for middle and high school students will open on Jan. 1, and close on March 15. We'll have lots of updates, training materials, and make sure to sign up for our newsletter with more tips and advice, here! "

A high school student annotates her award winning personal narrative: "Maria Fernanda Benavides, a winner of our 2019 Personal Narrative Contest, tells us how she hooks readers by dropping them into a scene."

"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)."

"This step-by-step format takes you from finding the right topic to researching, outlining and scripting, all illustrated with examples from the student winners of our previous Podcast Contests."

"Given those disparities, the district plans to recommend that, as long as students participate, teachers should revert to their previous progress grades. Students could potentially improve those scores, but they wouldn't be penalized. "I don't want to give everyone an A because we're just trying to be nice," said Patrick Keeley, the principal of the district's single high school. "But we don't want to ruin people's chances in the future, either," especially when it's due to factors outside of their control. Contrast Mountain Empire's context with that of the Salem City district in Virginia, near Roanoke. The district serves a small, fairly compact city. Every student in grades 3 through 12 has a Chromebook through its one-to-one program. Salem has about 200 "hot spots" for WiFi connectivity, and a cable company has agreed to provide free internet access for students qualifying for free and reduced-price lunches. So when its spring break ends on April 13, the district plans to make a legitimate go at covering the most essential of its remaining state standards via online learning-and to continue issuing letter grades for students' work. "We realize that if we tell kids today, 'Hey, your grade can't be any lower than it is now,' or if we tell them we're not going to grade them for the rest of the year, we're going to have a big chunk of kids check out," said Curtis Hicks, the district's assistant superintendent. "And that's not healthy for them for the short run, and it's not healthy for the long term, if students are underprepared for what comes next.""

"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."

"Conduct smoother video conferences with these tips from work-from-home veterans."

"Hundreds of teachers, many of them operating in countries where teach-from-home has been in place for weeks, weigh in on the mental approach you need to stay grounded in this difficult time."

"Students learned how authors support an argument using different types of evidence. The class watched the Op-Doc "China's Web Junkies" and noted how the filmmakers build their argument. We love how Ms. Marchetti uses this one to teach students how to identify and evaluate an author's argument."

"We asked students to write about a meaningful life experience. Here are the eight winning essays, as well as runners-up and honorable mentions."

"For 75 years, the Free Library of Philadelphia has held a rare, annotated copy of a First Folio of William Shakespeare, one of just 233 in the world. But nobody knew who had made the notes in the margins, correcting typos and highlighting where Shakespeare deviated from iambic pentameter. Until now, when a Cambridge University fellow and Penn State English professor revealed that the Free Library's First Folio was likely annotated and owned by English poet John Milton. Milton experts and curators of early books all over the world say that this could be one of the most important literary discoveries of our time."

"Journalism is tied to a set of ethical standards and values, including truth and accuracy, fairness and impartiality, and accountability. However, journalism today often strays from objective fact; the result is biased news. Bias isn't necessarily a bad thing, but hidden media bias misleads, manipulates and divides us. This is why AllSides provides hundreds of media bias ratings and a media bias chart. Seventy-two percent of Americans believe traditional news sources report fake news, falsehoods, or content that is purposely misleading. With trust in media declining, media consumers must learn how to spot types of media bias. This page outlines 11 types of media bias, along with examples of their use in popular media outlets."

"Each entry will spotlight a Times text, then offer guided practice to help students both identify effective "writer's moves" and emulate them in their own work."

"a list to help your students more easily connect the literature they're reading to the world around them - and to help teachers find great works of nonfiction that can echo common literary themes."

"The writing curriculum detailed below is both a road map for teachers and an invitation to students. For teachers, we've pulled together the many writing-related features we already offer, added new ones, and organized them all into seven distinct units. Each focuses on a different genre of writing that you can find not just in The Times but also in all kinds of real-world sources both in print and online. But our main goal is to offer young people a global audience - to, in effect, invite them to add their voices to the larger conversation at The Times about issues facing our world today. Through the opportunities for publication woven throughout each unit, we hope to encourage students to go beyond simply being media consumers to become media creators themselves. "

"The longest of the dashes - roughly the length of the letter "M" - the em dash is emphatic, agile and still largely undefined. Sometimes it indicates an afterthought. Other times, it's a fist pump. You might call it the bad boy, or cool girl, of punctuation. A freewheeling scofflaw. A rebel without a clause. Martha Nell Smith, a professor of English at the University of Maryland and the author of five books on the poet Emily Dickinson (the original em dash obsessive), said that Dickinson used the dash to "highlight the ambiguity of the written word." "The dash is an invitation to the reader to make meaning," Dr. Smith said. "It can also be a leap of faith.""

"A new musical explores life in high school in a way that's eerily familiar. It's called Ranked, and it's set in a dystopian world where your class rank - determined by grades and test scores - governs everything from where you sit to what your future holds." This musical, written by a high school teacher, explores some really interesting questions inspired by the students including: "How do we know the difference between who we actually are and what people want from us?" Usually, Granite Bay announces its spring musical by posting headshots of the performers in the hallway. But this year, it tried something a little different: Holmes asked students to anonymously submit personal text messages, exchanges and emails that depicted the pressure the students were under from parents and counselors. One text exchange reads: A: How was the test? B: I got an 86%! A: Oh no what happened? Another: A: I'm watching you B: Where am I currently then A: Failing class They used the messages in a collage that included headlines from recent news stories ("The Silicon Valley Suicides," "Is class rank valid?") and hung it in the hallway instead of the headshots. A banner at the top reads: "Pain is temporary. Grades last forever."

"Help stressed out, anxious, teenagers with social and emotional learning."

"Op-ed writing gives us the chance to delve into an issue we're passionate about and illuminate its importance for our readers. It's a powerful genre-with new research revealing the op-ed really does change people's minds. This month, we were honored to have writer, advocate and activist Dr. Anita Heiss with us. As our Guest Judge, Dr. Heiss offered invaluable advice on how to write an op-ed capable of catalyzing change. And today, after considering your compelling arguments, Dr. Heiss is eager to share her picks for Best Entry, Runner Up and Best Peer Review! Read on for her commentary on these original works. We want to send a special thanks to the Journalism Education Association for collaborating with us on this competition and for their commitment to helping young writers find their voice through journalism. "

"Two African-American members of the state Assembly have introduced a non-binding resolution calling on school districts in New Jersey to remove "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" - widely acclaimed as one of America's greatest literary works - from their curricula."