The Buzz of Teaching

As a Language Arts teacher, I need to constantly be combating the lie that Language Arts is boring. Students come to me bragging about how little they read and students love to complain about literature they find boring or useless.  Honestly, some literature is boring. And I tell them that. But BOY HOWDY do they have the wrong impression if they think I would choose boring stories to share. This video, a Safe For Work edited version of Thug Notes by the comedy collective called Wisecrack, demonstrates my ideology concerning Language Arts pretty well. The Web Series Thug Notes demonstrates my ideology about teaching Language Arts because it teaches its viewers classic literature in a novel way. (Check that pun, y'all).  The speaker uses his voice knowledge of his audience to target his viewers and encourage them to listen to the story. He emphasizes the zany plot points and characterization inherent in many pieces of classic literature that some readers might ...

My students and I laugh all the time in my classroom, so I didn't need to wait until the new year to create an experience, I have a treasure trove saved away in my brain. I have lofty goals sometimes. The most ridiculous lofty goal I had was trying to get my 9th graders to work together to give short informative speeches about their independent novels. On a typical day, tucked quietly in the middle of a slow month, this would not make any headlines; however, I was ridiculous and I planned this all to occur on the last day before Winter Break. Dumb. I even thought beforehand, "Wow. This is not a good idea. Is it possible to post-pone this?" so I looked in my calendar and realized NOPE. So I went with it.  My third hour class did just fine. But of course they would. It's a group of 30 students who are quiet and just like to get their work done. My fourth hour was going to be a nightmare. My fourth hour class of Language Arts 9 has fewer than 20 stude...

I know I already have a very active classroom in which students are up, moving purposefully around the room, and reflecting on their tasks. I purposefully utilize many strategies from my Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching and Learning Cohort to target not only the different rings of culture that exist within my classroom, but also because I just love having kids move around, reflect with their peers, and make the learning visible for my students, visitors to my classroom, and me. One new strategy I've implemented is called Chalk-n-Talk. Chalk-n-Talk is, at its core, a very simple exercise in getting students moving around the room and answering questions. One added important experience that separates Chalk-n-Talk from any other movement activity is that it incorporates student choice and  practice looking for patterns and  summarizing others' work. To set up Chalk-n-Talk is simple. Decide on which open-ended questions you want, write them down on larger-size...

For the first post on my blog I want to share a realization I've had today about my entire life.  I love titles. Titles are my jam because they can add so much personality to a boring essay, or they can help lend credibility to your argument from the start. They're useful, and I feel people should be more creative and purposeful about their titles. You don't know how depressing boring titles can be, especially when you have 47 more essays to read and they offer you nothing inspiring to encourage you to turn that page. Titles say a lot - that's the point - but personally, I like to be a little more purposeful, creative, kooky, or odd with how I title things. Creative titles spice up my life! While creating this blog, I rediscovered some of my old blog posts required by my Medieval Literature professor in college. The assignment was to read a collection of medieval literature, create a discussion post analyzing or reflecting the stories, and respond to seve...