Teachers at Work

"Teachers at Work" is a column about teaching the language arts and incorporating technology in the classroom. We interview educators across the country to hear their real-life experiences and learn from their wisdom. This feature appears regularly in the Visual Thesaurus subscriber-only magazine – and right here on this web page.

Learning English from Your Linguistic Landscape
June 12, 2015
Beadazzled is the name of a shop in a small town in the UK. A church in a city in Australia encourages passersby to "Prevent Truth Decay – Brush up on you Bible." These signs create something linguists Rodrigue Landry and Richard Y. Bourhis defined as "the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region or urban agglomeration" and they are all useful tools in the teaching of English to non-native speakers.
The Enduring Impact of English Teachers on Students
April 28, 2015
In my last column, I asked several multi-published authors this question: What advice do you wish your English teacher would have given you? Now, in this column, I'm going to share the answers to the second question I asked: What was the most important thing you learned in your English class that had a lasting impact?
How Can English Teachers Nurture Young Writers?
March 6, 2015
Lately, I've been talking about Stephen King while teaching Edgar Allan Poe. When King was in middle school, he wrote a "novel version" of Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum," based on the horror-movie adaptation. When his teacher, Miss Hisler, caught him selling mimeographed copies, she asked him why he was writing such "junk."
The Art of Subterfuge: Using Pop Culture to Create Interest in the Classics
December 5, 2014
Teachers, let's be honest. Most kids these days are more interested in the watching the latest video, writing a text, checking their social media or sending a Snapchat than they are digging into Mark Twain's Huck Finn (there's a movie for that).
You Mean I Really Have to Write This?
October 24, 2014
Once, a long time ago, my English III class began whining when I assigned an essay. "Why does it have to be five paragraphs? Why do we have to write this?" Without addressing the latter question, I answered very easily, "Let's make it ten."

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