A classroom can be two places at the same time: a place to work hard and learn valuable skills and a place to have fun and make meaning from

Schools and teachers usually organize ELA curriculum by novel, theme, or genre, or some combination of those three. 

Because I teach seniors, I start the year with a short unit on the personal narrative and college essay. It helps me get to know ...

It’s fun to end the year with a project that students will remember. Instead of a traditional final, there are a lot of ways ...

It’s spring, which means it’s time to get creative. At this point in the year, students should be close to meeting our expectations ...

Creating a short film used to be a long and difficult process, so I gave up on it. But then it became much easier to shoot and edit video.

It’s difficult to find a book that every child will love. They like contemporary stories that seem similar to their own ...

I used to get moans when I asked students to write a poem. But in the last few years ...

Literary techniques make literature, literature. Without them, we’d be left with words and facts...

I love to start the year with a month of poetry. The unit gives students the time to read the first novel independently and it functions ..

I start the school year talking about how language is all around us.

After I taught the elective Filmmaking for the first time a few years ago, I realized how easy it is for students to quickly create a ...

What makes a great personal narrative? In the beginning of every year, I ask my students to write a story that communicates something...

No, not that kind of drama. Performance. Few people know how to act, but everyone knows what a good performance looks like. The words...

Sometimes I like to complete the essay that I assign my students. In this case, I assigned a reflection on the last year. I also wanted...

I recently listened to the podcast “The Story of Your Life” on Hidden Brain by Shankar Vedantam. I felt like I was listening to ...

Magical realism goes beyond the place that a metaphor takes us. It goes beyond the realm of comparison.

My colleagues and I recently had a conversation about the rest of the year and what we could do to keep our students engaged....

I talk to my students about what I call "The 4 T's" of the college essay - topic, tone, theme, and time.

There’s something amazing that happens in a class when you ask students to write creatively.