Have you signed up for The Educator’s Room Daily Newsletter? Click here and support independent journalism! If you want to try an interesting experiment, ask your students to turn up the volume on their cell phones and tally how many times in a class period their cell phones signal an alert. We tried it a […]
Classroom Management
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Assessing Your School’s Social Emotional Learning Practice
Social and emotional learning is abuzz in educational circles now at long last. One might even say it’s a call to action, one that is long overdue in our schools.
Posted inOpinion
During COVID We Ignored These Dress Code Trends, Let’s Ditch Them Now
When teachers and students got sent home in March 2020, one of the many school norms suddenly ignored was the dress code for students and teachers alike. My own children used to normally wearing, khakis and polo shirts, suddenly lounged in athletic shorts and t-shirts as they sat in front of computers, completed homework, and […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Assigning a Research Paper? Think About Rigor, Responsibility, and Relevance in English/Language Arts
As English language arts teachers, we need to teach the language of doing business along with the literary arts. Thesis We teach literary research and other standard ELA concepts because students will be able to transfer the skills. Simply put, if students can research the imagery of Emily Dickinson’s poems, they can, likewise, research blood-alcohol […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Please Stop Using Blaccent With Your Students
Probably one of the most dehumanizing aspects of my educational journey as both a student and an educator is the “blaccent” that non-Black educators use when addressing Black people. According to Dictionary.com, a “blaccent” is “the imitation of Black English by non-black people.” It’s an offensive mockery of Black culture. To my non-Black educators, stop […]
Posted inClassroom Management
Ending the Epithet “Try-Hard” Once and for All in Classrooms
“Stop being such a try-hard, Tina.” There are many words kids use to insult one another. Most of them are so bad I wouldn’t dare print them here. They’re also so wrong and reprehensible that teachers quickly swoop in and stop it. But for this term – the “try hard” – teachers just laugh it […]
Posted inAsk a Teacher
Building a Teacher Rep-utation
Kevin M. McIntosh’s short stories have appeared in the American Literary Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Potomac Review, Chicago Tribune and have been nominated for Best New American Voices and the Pushcart Prize. He has had fellowships at the Ragdale Foundation and Blue Mountain Center. His novel Class Dismissed (Regal House Publishing, July 2021) is informed […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Culturally Relevant Lessons in the Life of DMX
I remember when I first taught the life, music, and poetry of Tupac Amaru Shakur back in 2002. I received my first written complaint questioning why an educator would “glorify a thug.” I knew then I would continue to find ways to tap into my students’ interest by using Hip Hop Culture in my curriculum. […]