Margaret Finders Piece – Ch. 2

I am mortified by the story that opens Chapter 2 of Finder’s piece on ELA.  I noticed the FOR DISCUSSION questions that followed the scene in Mr. Owen’s 7th grade classroom, and I would love to tackle those!
1.  What do you make of this scenario?  I find Mr. Owens’ classroom plan for the day to [...]

What We Believe? (Finders’ chapter)

I wanted us to check in with this historical overview (ch. 2) of approaches to teaching English Language Arts at about our semester mid-point and as we are thinking a seriously about our own unit planning.
We began the semester with, among other readings, Bob Yagelski’s important chapter for NCTE on English Education. Do make [...]

Conversational Borderlands-Book Review 2

This is a non fictional report of the school systems in the state of California. Betsy Rymes voices her concerns toward the schools in the city of L.A. Many of these schools are adjacent to downtrodden drug infested neighborhoods that fail to implement and encourage academic excellence. She interviews high school drop outs and gives the readers [...]