- Reading comprehension: the joy and the pain

It’s MCAS season, and all three of our children — a 3rd grader, a 7th grader, and a high school sophomore — are taking them. They seem unbothered by a few days of testing: Lydia announced, “They don’t matter,” and Grace said, “No homework this week!” Eli is his usual cool and collected self and [...]

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- Secret room dreams

I share an office with a few other writing teachers.  One of my office mates, T., recently told me about her adventures in flower pressing, and she gave me some petals.  Once curled and shaped, they are now paper thin and flat.
The pressed petals remind me of the bright, fallen, and wilted geranium petals on [...]

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- Considering toast

I was thinking of a croissant with my coffee, but then I smelled toast. “Ah, toast.” This was as I got within 20 feet of the snack bar in my building at 9am this morning. I gave in to the toast impulse — I smelled it, I pictured it, I heard the sound [...]

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- Fall to pieces

In revising longer works, it’s easy to fall into the trap of endlessly polishing word choices and sentences, because they are small units that can be both held in the writer’s attention and worked on at once, and avoid dealing with the draft in its entirety.
That kind of fine labor, though, could be like running [...]

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- Games teachers play

Items to keep in your school bag:

Not by nature a maker of fun, I do like to have fun, and I believe that others need it, too. Do you notice, for example, in a classroom, if the teacher is not providing any chuckles, a student in class will start performing that function? Intuitively, [...]

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- Potatoes, and other prompts

I like the concreteness of things. Focusing on them while writing also frees me from my vague and persistent thoughts. Put an old key, a knife, an unfamiliar picture, or brooch in front of me, and I feel interest in at least describing the item. That inevitably leads to a connection with [...]

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- Back to school

At an orientation for students involved in a bridge-to-college program, in which we offer enhanced, personal support to students who, in high school, were academically shaky, we asked them to put their heads together and come up with a list of characteristics delineating the “ideal instructor.”
What Makes a Good Teacher (according to students)

likes questions
loves what [...]

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- Feed your head

This curious writing exercise, from Pat Schneider’s Writing Alone and with Others, is unlike any I’ve done before. To begin, I had to put aside my internal language and “blank out,” in a way.
Imagine yourself looking down into a deep well. You are safe, comfortable, looking over the edge and down. You [...]

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- Find your questions

Last week I attended some excellent professional development workshops at the Landmark School. Derek Pierce, the faculty member who taught “Teaching the Analytical Essay,” got us to do some of the writing exercises he uses with his high school students. I found the following one really fruitful, and I promise that it’s as useful for [...]

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