Becky with the Silky Copper-Colored Hair: Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon...
This post is the third in a series about teaching Beyoncé’s visual album Lemonade album in conjunction with Toni Morrison’s novel Song of Solomon. You might want to read the first post and second post...
View ArticleBecky with the Silky Copper-Colored Hair: Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon...
If you missed the first three posts in this series, click the link(s) to access Part One, Part Two, and Part Three. This post is the final post in this series. It seems an appropriate time to share...
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Sid, who tweets @ThatTeacherSid on Twitter, posted the following tweet a few days ago: What are some of your favorite short stories, essays, poems (or poem collections), and speeches?I’m not asking for...
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One-Pagers
I shared some student work on Twitter, and it seemed as though some folks were interested in learning more about the concept. First of all, I didn’t come up with this concept at all. I’d seen...
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Sixteen Years Ago
Sixteen years ago today, I started this blog. My hope was that I could share my thinking about educational issues and perhaps share some of the curricular and teaching resources I created. I haven’t...
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Is Frankenstein Good?
If you haven’t checked out Michael Ian Black’s Obscure podcast (see bottom of the post for subscription links), you really should. Michael models exactly what I try to teach my students to do when...
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How I Start the Year
It seems strange to me that we’re talking about returning to school, but some of my friends in far-flung places are already back. I’ve seen a few tweets about ideas for starting the school year, and I...
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Walking
Photo by Arek Adeoye on Unsplash Last November, what with the pandemic and all, my weight reached a point that made me pretty unhappy. I could usually get a little bit of exercise by walking back and...
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Rumination Essays
A few years ago, I had the great fortune to be able to attend Kenyon College’s Writing Workshop for Teachers. My instructor was Dr. Emily Moore, who teaches at Stuyvesant High School in New York. She...
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5 Myths About Grading
Photo by CDC on Unsplash In June I successfully defended my dissertation at Northeastern University. My research focused on grading and assessment, which will likely not surprise anyone who has been...
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What to Assess? Ask.
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash I had a great discussion with my students today. A couple of them asked me why I don’t grade participation in Socratic seminars. I used to. I stopped because I find...
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Envisioning Units
One of the ways I try to keep my teaching fresh is to revise units and try new things. I am not one of those teachers who can do the same thing year after year. While I understand the pandemic has...
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Class Discussion Strategies
My AP Literature class in 2018 engaged in a discussion After introducing my AP Lit students to literary analysis tools and critical theory, I teach a unit called “Identity and Culture” with Toni...
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I’m Writing a Book
Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash I made an announcement on Twitter the other day that I believe I have figured out how to translate the work I did on grading and assessment for my dissertation into...
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Paired Texts: Lord Byron and Rudy Francisco
Reading Teach Living Poets (affiliate link) by Lindsay Illich and Melissa Alter Smith inspired a lesson plan pairing “She Walks in Beauty” by George Gordon, Lord Byron with “To the Girl Who Works at...
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Book Recommendation: Teach Living Poets by Lindsay Illich and Melissa Alter...
If you teach English, get this book! If you follow me on Twitter or have read through some of my previous blog posts, you probably know I’m a huge fan of #TeachLivingPoets. In fact, I’m not...
View ArticleTeaching Contemporary Novels
After finishing yesterday’s review of Teach Living Poets, it occurred to me that we shouldn’t just be teaching living poets. We should be teaching living authors, period, and for all the same reasons....
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Teaching Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing: Introduction
Yaa Gyasi’s 2016 novel Homegoing is one of my favorite books to teach. Not only is it well written and engaging, but it covers so many aspects of African-American and Ghanaian history that reading it...
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Teaching Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing: First Chapters
I mentioned that I love teaching Yaa Gyasi’s novel Homegoing so much that I tend to over-teach it in my previous post. This year, I’m trying to scale back what I do with students to the essentials....
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Teaching Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing: “James”-“Abena”
One of my favorite things about teaching Homegoing is the redemptive arc of the narrative. If this book has a thesis, I would argue that it can be found in Yaw’s chapter, when he is teaching his...
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