HC English Department

"The ability to think critically will benefit students throughout their lives. Here are a few tips on how to get started teaching it."

"Storytelling has been around as long as humankind. It is one of the most effective ways to communicate an important truth to another person. It is a connection point between two people. It gives meaning, context, and understanding in a world that is often filled with chaos and disorder. Because of this, educators must use stories if they hope to reach their students. Stories will stay with people much longer than facts or statistics. If a teacher becomes an excellent storyteller, he or she can ensure that any concept they teach will be remembered for years to come."

"Mortified shows, as they're called, feature adults reading aloud and on stage from their adolescent diaries. Readers typically share their most embarrassing and wrenching youthful stories on a variety of subjects: crushes, body image, self-esteem, divorce. Sharing these intensely private excerpts provokes laughter and connection between the audience and reader. The Mortified "movement" has grown to include podcasts, the film Mortified Nation, a couple of anthologies of stories and a Sundance TV series. Some Mortified fans, Gootee included, have found another medium for these deeply personal stories: the classroom."

"One of our strategies that teachers enjoy using at the end of the school year is a practical, easy-to-use tool we call Celebrating Learning With Year Mapping. This activity gives your current students a chance to feel good about what they've learned and provides incoming students an opportunity to see real evidence that they can be successful learners in the coming school year. And it gives teachers a chance to enjoy seeing students share what they've learned and to internalize their successful teaching."

"This is the first installment in an audio series featuring teachers reflecting on one of their most challenging students-counterbalanced by the student's version of the same events."

"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."

"Through hashtags, test takers have categorized tweets about different AP exams. #APLit for the AP Literature and Composition exam. #APBio for the AP Biology exam, and so on. While these tweets are in jest - and many in the format of popular memes -there is something peculiar about them: they are oddly specific. For example, in reference to the AP Literature and Composition exam, many users tweeted about Mr. Pickle and Godfrey. These tweets about the exam even inspired a Twitter moment that highlighted the best memes about the AP exam. A Twitter search of #APLit will yield similar results. All of these memes reference a specific short story published in 1751, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle by Tobias Smollett. While the tweets express the sentiment of the students taking the exam, they do another thing: reference the questions asked of them on the AP Literature exam."

"NPR is thrilled to announce its upcoming slate of podcasts. These six summer shows include a comedy, and for the first time, a children's show. "We are expanding the range of our programming by giving a platform to new voices, sharing a fun new side of favorite contributors, and doubling down on immersive stories and journalism," says Vice President for Programming and Audience Development Anya Grundmann."

"When students hear essay they think: Five paragraphs, written to impress teacher, mostly to show that the student has been paying attention in class and/or doing the reading. Make sure to cite sources because: plagiarism. Also, use block quotes because that looks good. Don't forget the conclusion that summarizes everything staring with, "In conclusion." Never use "I." Contractions…bad. This is why most essays are unpleasant for students to write, and boring for instructors to read. They are treated not as an occasion to discover something previously unknown - to the author above all - but a performance for an audience of one, the teacher. One hoop among many to be jumped through as part of the college grind. Because of the disconnect, instructors often have a different hoop in mind, and so when students jump through the hoop they know, but it's not the hoop the instructor was envisioning we get…a debate about whether or not we should even assign essays. Instead of assigning essays, in my course, I now feature "writing-related problems.""

"Students struggle at writing because in an era of standardization and accountability, very little of the "writing" we ask them to do requires them to engage deeply with the true basics of writing: ideas. Maguire analogizes writing with the "muscle memory" that Mr. Miyagi teaches Daniel in "The Karate Kid," but writing is thinking, and thinking is not a reflex, but is instead a complex and deliberative process. Maguire's focus on sentence "readability" as the basics of writing is actually rooted in the same problems with writing instruction that is oriented toward passing standardized assessments judged on surface level traits. Students are coached on rubrics and rules that will help them pass muster on these tests - for good reason when teachers and schools are going to be judged on the results - but genuine, meaningful writing does not adhere to rubrics and rules."

"Business Insider has rounded up some of the best short podcasts out there - podcasts that somehow manage to fascinate, entertain, and teach you something cool in 30 minutes or less. Whatever your current mood or interest, there's a program here for you."

"Dialogue is at the heart of the programme. With Generation Global, teachers can transport their classes across the world in a single afternoon. Online and through videoconferences, students interact directly with their peers around the world, engaging in dialogue around issues of culture, identity, beliefs, values, and attitudes."

""The high school structure doesn't work for every student," said West Seattle Principal Ruth Medsker. Often big high schools like West Seattle require students to be compliant in order to fit in and that can lead to disengagement. Medsker is interested in finding models within her large school that offer something different to students who want it. "How do we make the system fit the child instead of trying to make the kid fit the system?" she asked. Teachers at her school are exploring this question in a variety of ways, including through a pilot advisory-type program that began with a cohort of 25 tenth graders. "The idea was these students have promise, they have skills, they have things to offer, but something about our school system wasn't working for them," said Matt Kachmarik, who acted as the advisor, social studies and English teacher to this group of students. As much as possible, school staff tried to give these 25 kids schedules that would allow them to take classes together. They also focused on non-cognitive skills using reflection, team-building games and discussion to tease out what was going on outside of school, as well as barriers to learning inside its walls. "I definitely have some students who are among the deepest thinking of anyone in the entire grade," Kachmarik said. Some of them are under a lot of stress or have experienced trauma or just don't have strong executive functioning skills, but they've found a home in what they call the Focus program."

"In the second half of the year, my writing course shifts to a more focused study of argument. We read and analyze several mentor texts together as a class, starting with speeches and letters, including an in-depth analysis of the classic  "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King, Jr. (this year, I also paired King's text with "The Future Needs Us" by Rebecca Solnit and the introduction from Writings on the Wall by Kareem Abdul Jabbar). But the key to teaching students how to analyze argument-particularly in today's media rich world-is to make the time and space for students to take what they have learned and apply it independently. (In fact, that's true when you teach anything.) So this year, I changed up my argument unit a bit to include a two-week workshop period in which students would: Read several arguments from a variety of media (written, visual, auditory, film); Analyze the arguments for their line of reasoning; Write their own original essay which defends, challenges, or qualifies a claim made by one (or more) of the arguments they studied."

"Authors share and discuss their all-time favorite passages in literature."

Stories for the Classroom: "Want to share Moth stories with your students? Start with this educator recommended playlist:"

"Serial proved that true-crime podcasts could be global phenomena that rival even the most prestigious of prestige scripted television. But with S-Town, the new podcast from team Serial that launched today, the creators aren't taking their cues from HBO. Instead, they're borrowing a page from William Faulkner, hoping to re-invent the medium once again-this time as a sweeping, Southern Gothic novel. Hosted by This American Life producer Brian Reed, S-Town is the latest offering from Serial Productions, which includes Serial host Sarah Koenig and executive producer Julie Snyder. The seven-part podcast, released in its entirety today, follows Reed as he meets, and ultimately befriends, a fascinating man who claims to have knowledge of an unsolved murder in his rural Alabama town (which the man nicknames "Shittown"-hence the podcast's name). But what begins as a classic murder mystery quickly turns into something much deeper-a winding, intricate narrative of small town politics, family strife, and, as the S-Town team describes it, "the mysteries of one man's life.""

"How lawmakers and school officials police social media can have serious implications for youth free expression. We have seen students punished for online speech that was discovered by faculty, reported by other students or with the aid of surveillance companies like SnapTrends, CompuGuardian, Gaggle, and Social Sentinel Inc. Punishment for speech often comes under the veneer of keeping schools "safe," whether from physical violence or emotional distress. But how far can that authority legally extend? When do schools go too far in policing student speech online? As we'll explain, the lines are not as clear as one might think."

"Throughout all four years at Big Picture, I felt valued, and I felt like my voice mattered. From my experience at Big Picture -- and from knowing what engaged me in my learning -- here are four practical tips that you can adopt to engage your students."

"Writing coaches asked students to think of a family recipe with a backstory - and then write an essay around that dish. The 81 recipes and their accompanying stories that resulted make up a cookbook of global cuisine with a heartfelt touch, revealing that storytelling may be the most important step in any recipe."