I pulled into the parking lot and parked in my usual place. I was always early, and there was only one other car in the parking lot. I hopped out and got my extension cord to plug in the block heater. The cord was still frozen and had to be carefully untangled. The drive to […]
English/Language arts
Posted inHistory
History Matters in Schools. Here’s How I Taught it in my English/Language Arts Classroom
Have you signed up for The Educator’s Room Daily Newsletter? Click here and support independent journalism! Early in my teaching career, I attended a challenging and eye-opening conference on Holocaust education hosted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. I had taught Holocaust literature since the beginning of my career, anchoring most of my Holocaust units in […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Fire the Canon: Curriculum is the Vehicle, Not the Destination
Fire the Canon: Curriculum is the Vehicle, Not the Destination It feels like every year around this time, the English department has a serious discussion about the curriculum. We start with valid PLC questions about key skills and standards at each grade level, but quickly devolve into how we taught specific canonical books and the […]
Posted inCurrent Events in Education
Writing Across the Content Areas: Family Message Journals
Christian Dria grew up in Minnesota and knew in the 1st grade that she wanted to be a teacher. She earned her degree at the University of Wisconsin and has been a primary teacher for 28 years. She lives in Central Minnesota with her husband and daughter. I chuckled after asking, “What did you […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
13 Websites for Middle-High School Students
CommonLit: CommonLit is a nonprofit education technology organization dedicated to ensuring that all students, especially students in Title I schools, graduate with the reading, writing, communication, and problem-solving skills they need to be successful in college and beyond. This is a great tool to help students as they try to stay on track with grade-level […]
Posted inHigh School
The Importance of Addressing “I’m so bored” Comments
This past semester I was in the midst of teaching one of my favorite units that I’ve ever taught in my career thus far. My students read a play about characters who are a part of a First Nations community in British Columbia, Canada. The play, titled Where the Blood Mixes, deals with tragedy and […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Bringing Climate Change into the E/LA Classroom
English/language arts students have the privilege of being “transported across the globe, back in time or into the future” as they read poems, plays, novels, and articles because classrooms are “spaces of discovery, possibility, and participation where students learn to empathize with experiences of people like and unlike themselves” (Beach et al, 2017). These students […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month with Book Talks
Over the past five years, I have built my classroom library from just 104 books to over 1100 high-interest young adult literature spanning from realistic fiction to nonfiction to fantasy & sci-fi to historical fiction. While I routinely do Book Talks each week–among other things–to get kids interested and engaged with my classroom library, I […]