Monthly Archives: December 2009
On Gifts
Every get a holiday gift from one of your students? Here’s one teacher’s reflection on the annual ritual. Continue reading
How We Become Better Teachers: We Revise
by JESSE SCACCIA Teaching is not a profession where one can assume their proficiency grows along a similar upward trend to years in the field. Yes, you’ll pick up tricks along the way. If you’re smart after a few years … Continue reading
Filed under Classroom Reflections
When Our Students Become Our Teachers
by JESSE SCACCIA It’s the end of the term, and things are crazy busy for us all, so this will be a shorter post. I’ve been going through a rough time lately, both personally and with my writing. One of … Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
Bringing It Down from the Ivory Tower: The Art of the Real
Plainly, I have not ever read poetry from any author, any period, or any culture that did not match in complexity, creativity, technique and beauty with a number of modern day hip hop artists. I offer that when we understand that in academia, the “real” shall meld with the real and students will have access to what many of them find relevant and non-exclusionary. Continue reading
Filed under Essays
What I Hear When My Students Write About Sex, Drugs, and Hip Hop
by CATHLIN GOULDING For most of the seniors in my Poetry course, it is their first time taking a creative-writing course. While they have written love poems during Algebra or scribbled lyrics in black and white composition books, this is … Continue reading
Filed under Classroom Reflections
The Good, the Bad, and the Crazy: A semi-coherent ramble on topics as far-ranging as my crazy ass sophomores, teacher evaluation, and PCP
I’ve got some crazy ass sophomore this year. The kids aren’t disrespectful per se—they’re just… young. And I actually kind of love them for it. Their transgressions have been cuter than they’ve been disheartening—with a couple of exceptions, of course. Continue reading
Filed under Classroom Reflections
Why I Love Vonnegut is also Why I Love Teaching
by JESSE SCACCIA This week my class and I have been talking Vonnegut. My unit plan had called for lessons about letter writing, but for some reason recently I had mentioned Vonnegut in passing. I waited for some sort of … Continue reading
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Skeletons in the Educational Closet
Mostly, the people who talk about education talk about under-privileged urban youth who are not getting a chance. It is true that they are not, and it is an embarrassment to the whole country that more is not being done to fix both urban and rural education systems beginning at pre-K. I am ecstatic that people are trying to right those ships, but I am also appalled that so few researchers and politicians are willing to do or say anything about gifted education. Continue reading
Filed under Essays
