I am alarmed by the growing popularity of the English only movement in this country. The chapter about teaching second language learners in “But Will it Work with Real Students?”: Scenarios for Teaching English Language Arts by Janet Alsup and Jonathan Bush made me think about why I need to be more of an advocate [...]
I agree with Swenson et al. in their article, “Extending the Conversation: New Technologies, New Literacies, and English Education,” that the main purpose of writing (in any forum) is to make meaning. I also agree that our current model for assessing writing doesn’t promote teaching writing with this goal in mind. They write: “In an [...]
I have a confession to make: I have now read the chapter on deconstruction in Deborah Appleman’s book Critical Encounters in High School English three times, and I still don’t get it. It seems to me that deconstruction is only about finding contradictions within a text…is that it? Don’t we do that with every literary [...]
“I want my students to think about the worlds these texts both represent and invoke. I want them to think about what set of beliefs drive these characters and, in some cases, help seal their fate. I want them to think about the author’s relationship to those set of beliefs. I think I sometimes forget [...]
I am probably most familiar with Reader-Response Theory. I have been using a reader-response approach to teaching literature since I first started teaching; In fact, I was using it before I knew what to call it. It is how I learned to approach literature and it is how I have most enjoyed dealing with literature, [...]
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 [...]
How does one learn how to teach? What is that quintessential knowledge that good teachers have? Who is the expert—the classroom teacher or the university researcher? All of these questions kept reverberating in my head as I read the selections for today. Intuitively, I feel like I’ve known the answers to these questions all [...]
