Now that my first quarter teaching English 101 is over, and I have spent untold locate where my classroom seemed to get lost, disengaged, exceedingly quiet or when the room emitted at least a few reticent sparks— I believe I have come up with an idea of what was missing. Although the curriculum was […]

I could roundup a whole cast of adversarial teachers from my formative years that, if you were presented with snapshots of their wrongdoings, would shock you. I had one teacher that would pass out a math test to everyone in the room except me because “I would just fail anyway”. I had another teacher (both […]

To begin to address this important question regarding toxic student behavior, I had to generate a list then enumerate them from most to least damaging, holistically. Here is a glimpse of what is happening in my classroom that feels toxic, “enlarged for detail”— meaning there are really nice things that also happen, and my classroom […]

Not surprisingly, my young students don’t believe they’re writers at all. I imagine they look at the classroom (and wordpress) as a kind of echo-chamber; assuming their voice will bounce off the walls and return to them— that there is no receiver. This tenuous call-and-response attitude they have when they’re asked to write is typical, […]

I apologize for my title. It seems like a huge obstacle to student writing is that they are thoroughly conditioned to be performative and to respond to cues- the compulsion is to mimic each other, satisfy the teacher or get the correct answer. Their writing, at this adolescent stage, is reflective of the way they’ve […]

I am a very romantic person. I got totally swept away by Dead Poets Society as a kid because it wasn’t about “school” it seemed to be about freedom. Looking back, I’m sure it was so appealing to me because it was the antithesis of my experience in English class. I have wanted to be […]

  “Often, maps are created not to reveal exclusion, but to create it.” p. 4/30 I thought the essay Steep Steps was really interesting, especially in terms of how there are rhetorical decisions being made when considering specialization and designing architecture that have real-world implications regarding including or excluding certain types of bodies. I have […]

How I imagine the role of English 101 and the community in our department must be nothing like how the students see it/us. I am the most biased observer in this context because I’ve *always* been a writer, reader and lover of all things related to communication and expression. I am well aware that most […]

My classroom is a workshop in the sense that everyday is a test-site for collaboration, experimentation, and creative guesswork. Like any well-used workshop space, there are attempts at figuring out the utility of our new tools with mixed results; some of the activities are successful and some utterly flop. When I’m “back at the drawing […]