In over 10 years of teaching college writing classes (my other gig besides reporting on obscure euphemisms in Evasive Maneuvers) I've seen boatloads of comma splices, goofy fonts, and misspellings of not only my name but the student's own. Plus plagiarism. Oh, the plagiarism I've seen! If plagiarism were flowers, I'd have earned a second Ph.D. in botany by now. Here are a few examples harvested from my ever-blooming garden of academic dishonesty. Warning: you may need to hold your nose.  Continue reading...

Teachers at Work contributor Shannon Reed had a "bad class" this year at the Brooklyn public school where she teaches English and theater. Shannon describes how she found a way to engage with the students through "spoken word" poetry.  Continue reading...

While English teachers are notorious for teaching the plot curve and its inciting incident, rising action and climax, etc., and while this is a great way to analyze literature, one of my most interesting sets of lessons involves leaving the plot curve behind and replacing it with the three-act structure most screenwriters and novelists use today.  Continue reading...

As chronicled in this space over the last year, one of my 11th grade classes has been the chief guinea pig -- um, I mean, main lucky participants! -- in a curriculum one of my colleagues and I have been developing. We're taking her core Earth Science content and combining it with my Beginning Playwriting practice.  Continue reading...

Once upon a time, in a suburban St. Louis County high school almost thirty years ago, there studied a girl who couldn’t seem to write an essay to save her life. She watched the papers come back. AP European History—D-. AP English—C. But owing to smaller class sizes and tenacious teachers who bled all over her paper with red ink, this girl began to see her mistakes. She tightened. She tweaked. She revised. She edited.  Continue reading...

This week marks the opening of the 2011 baseball season. Teachers, what better way to prepare your students for the season than to give them a little baseball vocabulary preview? Every sport has its own vocabulary, and baseball is no exception.  Continue reading...