Classroom management often evokes strong reactions and responses from teachers. While it is not more important than curriculum and instructional practices, as Janet Alsup and Jonathan Bush write in “But Will it Work with Real Students”: Scenarios for Teaching Secondary English Language Arts, “A teacher who does not develop a culture of learning and [...]
Students will swear that Shakespeare is written in a foreign language. As an English teacher, their protests are disheartening because it is the language that makes Shakespeare’s plays so wonderful and brilliant. I can get them to understand the themes, and I can [...]
My first question after reading Arthur Applebee’s article, “Toward Thoughtful Curriculum: Fostering Discipline-Based Conversation in the English Language Arts Classroom” (1994), is what is so wrong with a content-based curriculum? While I agree that curriculum should be relevant to students’ lives, I am weary to throw content out the window. I mean, is there a [...]
My first thought after reading both the Alsup and Bush (2003) discussion on standardized testing and The International Reading Association’s position statement on high-stakes assessments in reading (1999) was that testing is, surely, the bane of education. Even if [...]
