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I’m not a huge fan of showing movies in class; most films do not meet my expectations for a good use of class time. I tend to ask myself: Will a clip suffice? Will a series of short clips from a film suffice? What is the purpose of using the film in class? Read More...
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I continually hear from my fellow department members that kids today are not as intelligent as kids 10 years ago, and I admit that I have seen a distinct difference between the general students of today and a decade ago; however, I also see a marked contrast Read More...
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The title of this post is a goal I set for myself two years ago. I do fairly well now in this endeavor, though it was quite difficult at first. Now, I feel like it’s becoming second nature to refocus my students every 15 minutes. And the results are telling. Read More...
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Well, I’m neck-deep in paperwork, meetings, and planning, but everything is working out well. Still, I want to accomplish three goals this week: to have the students write in a different (and more fun) mode, to force the students to review a literary Read More...
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I spent the last week teaching my students how to score AP essays, and they did a fantastic job! We looked at the AP writing rubric and a retired prompt on Monday, and then scored a single paper based on that prompt each day this week. As we moved through Read More...
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This year I’m going to start my College in the High School class (American Literature) with the rhetorical triangle . We will focus on creating solid arguments which use all three appeals: emotional, logical, and ethical. Each time the students construct Read More...
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For those of you who teach about Ken Kesey or use One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in the classroom, a new film about Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters and Further arrives in theaters in August. It might be worth checking out. The trailer is below . I know Read More...
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I’m in the middle of teaching John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath today, and I presented the students with the following question: If the economic system used in our society guarantees winners and losers, does this mean society has an obligation to take Read More...
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Last semester my juniors composed a thesis paper, and it was a rousing success. I had a series of three editing days where students worked in groups editing papers using a process I created, and then the students completed an editing session with me leading Read More...
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The author of this article and I thought of the same Mark Twain line when seeing the insanity of replacing the n-word with “slave:” The difference between the almost-right word & the right word is . . . the difference between the lightning bug and the Read More...
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I just thought I’d throw out into cyberspace what I like to do when teaching Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 . First, we read Bradbury’s “The Pedestrian” and talk about Bradbury’s views. I begin the next few days by sharing a number of statistics about Read More...
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A while back I wanted my students to write more, but I knew I didn’t have the time to assess more. So, like Miniver Cheevy , I “thought, and thought, and thought/ and thought about it…scratched [my] head and kept on thinking…/coughed, and called it fate,/ Read More...
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Over at the Seattle Times a blog post from Ed Cetera has sparked some conversation around the water cooler in our English Department. In the posting Ed Cetera wonders why people love J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, and then he mentions his love for Read More...
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I just finished planning for January, and I’m going to be teaching the following this month. American Literature : First, we’ll review the Edgar Allan Poe writings (“The Raven” and “Masque of the Red Death” and “The Tell Tale Heart”) as well as Nathaniel Read More...
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When in class one of my favorite weapons in my arsenal against inattentiveness is humor, so I promised my students that with each “-ism” I show them in class that I would provide a joke with each. Today I presented to them artistic and literary examples Read More...
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