What did you read over break? As usual I plowed through a few fun books, like Ruth Ware’s The Lying Game, Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, and Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. But I also set aside time for a few “good” books — you know, the ones that require a little more…
Read MoreAll articles filed in a teacher’s life
Compassion alone is not enough
In high schools nationwide, and mine is no exception, we are seeing more and more teenagers suffering from mental health crises. Students at my school are talking openly about this – trying to raise awareness by making videos, creating T-shirts, and even speaking to the faculty. This is good. We need to be made aware…
Read MoreOverwhelmed by exceptions
Cartoon from http://theprocessconsultant.com/ If you’re not a teacher, it’s easy to think a teacher’s job is three things: Design and deliver effective lessons Check students’ understanding through daily work, and Evaluate tests and various sort of papers, like essays and lab reports. But that’s just the easy part. Our job is really about managing ambiguity, trying…
Read MoreWhy do we let kids give up?
I hate it when a student drops my class. At my high school, the beginning of the year is a revolving door of adds and drops, as students try out different classes and re-evaluate the schedules they selected six months earlier, when they were feeling ambitious. This system has a lot of drawbacks — class…
Read MoreLate work IS still a problem
A good friend recently returned to teaching high school, after a long hiatus. Now she’s kind of like Rip Van Winkle, waking up to see how the world around her has changed. The biggest shock so far, she told me, is the idea that due dates don’t matter much anymore. She can’t wrap her head…
Read MoreAre we ready for student speech?
“Do you think high school students have the same right to free speech as adults?” This warmup question, which I used for years as an introduction to teaching Tinker v. Des Moines to my Civil Liberties classes, sparked a heated discussion among teachers at a workshop I led earlier this week. No issue is more…
Read MoreA solution – or a new problem?
Yesterday, I received an email from “R” saying a parent was requesting that I join 55 other teachers at my school who are “already using Remind.” This struck me as odd. Was the request really from a parent? (“R” came with no last name or email address.) Are parents demanding this, or is it clever…
Read MoreIt’s not about obedience anymore
What do puppy training and teaching have in common? More than you might imagine. A month ago, we adopted a new dog, Taffy, into our home. She’s two years old, a terrier-ish “rescue,” described by her foster family as “very high energy.” (We also have Star, another terrier-ish “rescue,” who is about five years old.)…
Read MoreSo I was a little busy…
I try to post to this blog once a week, but sometimes I fall behind. Like the last three weeks. What happened? It’s not that I didn’t want to write, and it’s definitely not that I’d run out of things to say. I have opinions about nearly everything, and I’m constantly filing away ideas during…
Read MoreWhat do ‘experts’ have to offer us?
For the past few weeks, I’ve been going to physical therapy to deal with rotator cuff tendinitis in my right shoulder. At my intake appointment, I learned that I brought this problem on myself by doing what I thought was “the right thing.” For years, I thought I was helping my shoulders and preventing future…
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MARTHA RUSH 