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Just Bubble In "C" for a Sandwich
(Illustration by Nicholas Frith, Wall Street Journal)I’m entertained by the simultaneous rise in resistance to the Common Core and No Child Left Behind mandates and the renaissance in experiential...
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5-Second Book Review x 3
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben FountainIncredible. A must-read. The Great American Novel of the Iraq War. This book accomplishes everything we ask of good fiction. I can't throw enough...
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Garfield's Glock
I wrote with my students this morning. Here is the first-draft result plus a couple of photos I snapped of yesterday's Sunday newspaper and another one I took back in August.We Have a Problem: In...
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On the Upside of Illness
Man, I love teaching Honors Creative Writing if for no reason other than daily Sacred Writing Time. Here is mine from today:On the Upside of IllnessHalfway through the work day on Monday, my body...
View ArticleA Meditation, Of Sorts
Yesterday's reflection, a first-draft:There is No News Cycle on the TrailThe world todaywent farther into thehandbasket's hell,no doubt,but forgive mefor not noticing this time.You see,it's late...
View ArticlePoetry, Football, & I Still Miss Lloyd Carr
My alma mater just lost, again, to the devil's football team. I think this poem might explain what happened. Go, sigh, Blue.FootballLouis JenkinsI take the snap from the center, fake to the right,...
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Do It For the Children
A rambling, oh-so-rambling initial reflection on NCTE12Something like 300 student papers are chewing at my heels, but before I crack my lion tamer's whip at them, I have to offer one reflection on the...
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The News or The Onion?
Why is critical thinking important? Because discerning between the News or the Onion is a real life skill. Here it is at work (or not, really): A satirical military blog post was mistaken for a real...
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Article 7
I haven't put up a poem in awhile. [Heck, I haven't been putting much anything on the blog in awhile (a certifiable trend in the post-introduction-of-Twitter world, I presume).] But I heard this poem...
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Strange times
Just an FYI: The singularity may be happening.I invited my students to think of unique events they had witnessed and to write a brief essay about it. We were using Michel de Montaigne's "Of a...
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Wait, We're Supposed to Check History Before Forming an Opinion? Sez Who?
Disclaimer: This is not a politics blog. There's enough of that out there, done by folks smarter than I. This blog does occasionally talk about writing, though, and that's why I post the following....
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ABABCDCDEFEFUh-Oh
We saw Phillip Levine read last night at the Detroit Institute of Arts. It was lovely, funny, caustic, insightful, you name it. It was everything a good reading with Q & A from a former poet...
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I can read with my ears, right?
Here is a good article by Jenni Laidman on audiobooks. Since I overbook my life on an almost daily basis (it's a disease, I know), I have very little time to read literature. If I've read six books...
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Let's take it slow
This is perhaps the best encapsulation I've read of recent research on the value of fiction. Three cheers for Maura Kelly for putting it so eloquently. That said, I do need to quibble with her quotable...
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The News or The Onion?
Today's entry in The News or The Onion? looks shockingly realistic but is actually from the Onion. Despite a crippling poverty problem affecting America's public schools, this Onion headline about...
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News or The Onion?
A middle-aged teacher leaving his wife and family for an eighteen-year-old girl sounds completely Oniony. Turns out, it's true. In addition to the obvious creepiness issues, I question the depth of...
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You Gotta Read This, Feb. 17th edition
Here are five articles I read in the past couple of weeks that, for one reason or another, I think everyone should read. So, read 'em.Miscellaneous:1. Hilarious, and really wish it was true: The...
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Moneymoneymoneymoney & Teachers
Read all of this. Twice. Then re-read #6 another few times. Then share this page with everyone you know who has any form of opinion about education because by my experience, Daniel Pink has nailed the...
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Every Click Counts
This is my latest must-read article, Clay Johnson's "Feasting on Junk Info," from the Los Angeles Times. He hits on one of my favorite ranting topics: You can't complain about the media if you're...
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Sure, happiness might be a warm puppy, but
it's also having a national pundit say your job is "an impossible task" at a time when most politicians and other pundits want to blame you for all that ails the country. Thanks, Mr. Weissmann, for...
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