Bachelor Ducks You sit on mowed suburban lawns, fussing at each other or animatedly chatting— I can’t tell which Nestling together snoozing on a cool spring morning Sometimes two Sometimes...

THE COROLLA’S BAD ALTERNATOR I went driving with my daughter In my truck to see the man Who drives a wrecker, To see if he’d fix my car. On the shiney black of Bank Street’s asphalt We passed...

Censorship is nothing new. By creating morals, we have to live with the things that challenge our morals. The trouble is, everyone has a different threshold of morality and most people don’t understand...

The other day in my high school creative writing class we were talking about identity. I told my students that our identities are often determined by our place in society. I asked them to consider this...

Reluctant School Reader’s Lament: A Found Poem* Man, school’s a prison. No freedom to read what interests me. No purpose to English. It’s about NOTHING. Just going from assignment to...

There is strong support for teacher book talks, a practice I learned about from Nancie Atwell’s In the Middle and later in Penny Kittle’s Book Love. While I am totally in favor of the teacher book...

I believe in butterflies. Not a monarch, nor something that flitters by on a warm spring day.  But the awakening that happens in a student when he or she does “that one thing”. I teach high...

As I was driving home from another amazing ICTE Annual Fall Conference, I was reflecting on my weekend and my first few years of teaching. As per my usual, this reflection took place against the backdrop...

The author argues that in order to create a more cohesive, compassionate, and educated society, students must be taught to use objective, reliable sources in studying multiple perspectives on an issue. Students...

One of my favorite Edu-Twitter moments from the past summer was witnessing, in real time, the emphatic and unified voice of American libraries and readers in response to an ill-conceived Forbes opinion...

There’s toilet paper streaming from the trees in my front yard, chalk paint covering car windows all over town, and long-lost familiar faces wandering the streets. It’s homecoming season. First the...

A Dying Wish Inspired by Ray Bradbury’s, “All Summer in a Day” Annabel was more tired than she had ever thought possible, and yet she had done nothing to cause her to feel this way. She had woken...