OK, I didn’t plan very well, and I ran out of time at the end of the school year. I really wanted my students to experience Wuthering Heights, but I knew there was no way we had a enough time to read this layered, complex, richly woven tapestry of a novel. So I kind of…
Our Spring Break was last week, so I didn’t post a reflection. As this was the week of our return to school, and we have also entered that final stretch of the year, I’m not sure either I or the students were as plugged in as usual. My seniors basically have two weeks left because…
This time of year, I find that I’m not blogging as much as I would like because I’m so exhausted. You know, people talk about what a perk it is for teachers to have breaks in the winter and spring and a longer one in the summer — usually people who don’t teach, by the…
This week, one of my ninth grade classes finished The Catcher and the Rye, and we began discussing it in class. We also studied adjective and adverb phrases. The students really enjoyed the discussion of the novel, and I think they liked the book a great deal. That novel always seems to be popular, especially…
Soon after The Freedom Writers, a movie based on the book The Freedom Writer’s Diary by Erin Gruwell and her students, was released to theaters, I viewed the movie and posted a review here. I know some educators don’t like this kind of movie in general and didn’t like this movie in particular, but I…
English teachers looking for a good version of Macbeth to show their students in conjunction with a study of Shakespeare’s play should avoid Geoffrey Wright’s 2006 production. Like Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet before it, this modern Macbeth seeks to lure in the younger set; however, unlike Luhrmann’s production, in the case of Macbeth, the…
