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 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’ve been thinking a lot about all the challenges of this past year, but also trying to learn from it. I tried book clubs for the first time

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.