You are likely getting close to midterm. A time when you have to assign a grade to the human beings you have been teaching that conflates all they have been doing to a letter. At Oklahoma State University, we are also at midterm. Students want …
Imagining a No-Grades Classroom
In 2015, I began imagining a no-grades classroom. I wasn’t sure what this meant at the time. All I knew is that the letters and numbers that I put alongside students’ names didn’t even come close to representing who they were as learners and what …
#OkCTE 2019 Conference: Book Groups, #buildyourstack, & LGTBQ+ Literature
Thank you for your interest in our sessions at the Oklahoma Council of Teachers of English, @oklacte, #okcte. There were many great sessions this year with the keynote by Dr. Antero Garcia. Below are materials from the sessions I presented and co-presented. Please be mindful …
Centering Trauma as Powerful Pedagogy in ELA Classrooms by Elizabeth Dutro
Today’s blog post comes from Elizabeth Dutro. Elizabeth is professor and chair of literacy studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she teaches courses in writing, approaches to inquiry, education in film, and literacy theory and practice. In her research, she collaborates closely with …
Keeping the “Circuit” Live: Rosenblatt, Pre-Service Teachers, and the Library
Especially in high school years, we should help young people to discover the power of literature to enable us to experiment imaginatively with life, to get the feel and emotional cost of different adult roles, to organize and reflect on a confused and unruly reality, …
All Children Are All Our Children by Doug Selwyn
Today’s post comes from Doug Selwyn. Doug has been an educator for more than thirty years, the first half as a teacher in K–12 in the Seattle Public Schools and the second half in teacher education, first at Antioch University, Seattle and then for ten …
September: 5/5-Day Challenge
A very special thank you to Anna J. Small Roseboro for her guidance and support during this September’s 5-day writing challenge with teachers. Her website is filled with more resources as are her books. (Check out her new book of poems in English and Spanish …
September: 4/5-Day Writing Challenge
A Spine Poem Today, consider “spine” as a pun, a word with multiple meanings that work in the same setting. Millions of men and women of Hispanic heritage have served as the “spine” or backbone of our nation by assuming the backbreaking and back bending …
September: 3/5-Day Writing Challenge
Inspired by an Artist A native of Detroit, Michigan, I learned early about the art of muralist Diego Rivera, whose magnificent paintings of Motor City history grace the walls of the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA). We had school trips to view the Rivera frescos, …
September: 2/5-Day Writing Challenge
Honor a Leader Consider a 20-21st Century local, state or national leader of Hispanic American descent and write an acrostic poem showcasing the attributes and/or contributions of this leader to your school, community, state or our nation. In the introduction to poem, include a sentence …