contributorMichele Dunaway
Michele Dunaway is an award-winning English and journalism teacher who, in addition to teaching English III, advises the student newspaper, yearbook and news website at Francis Howell High School in St. Charles, MO. In 2009, the Journalism Education Association awarded Michele with its Medal of Merit. She has received recognition as a Distinguished Yearbook Adviser in the H.L. Hall Yearbook Adviser of the Year competition and was named a Special Recognition Newspaper Adviser by the Dow Jones News Fund. She also practices what she teaches by authoring professional journal articles and writing novels.Teachers at WorkA column about teachingBeware the Pitfalls of Summer Reading May 23, 2011 By Michele Dunaway
I'm an avid reader, and when I was little, I'd ride my bike down to the library bookmobile at the start of June and sign up for the summer reading program. Each week I'd read book after book, make the pilgrimage and watch my goal chart fill up with stars.
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Article Topics:Teachers at WorkA column about teachingDeviating from the Plot Curve: Teaching Turning Points May 10, 2011 By Michele Dunaway
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.
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Article Topics:Teachers at WorkA column about teachingWhat's in a Number: The Problem with Holistic Grading April 5, 2011 By Michele Dunaway
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.
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Recently I made a big gaffe in one of my columns. Despite the fact I read my columns over dozens of times, and then I have a peer edit, and then there's a Visual Thesaurus editor who reads and edits, I still misspelled the name of one of my favorite authors. (I also was chided for making up words, but as an author that's my creative prerogative and we can debate my taking that license another time.)
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Article Topics:Teachers at WorkA column about teachingThe Hunt for Literary Allusions February 8, 2011 By Michele DunawayLiterature is everywhere. Well, literary allusions are everywhere, that is. Students of today live in a time where they have always known cable television, computers and cell phones. Movies come in the mail or via the Wii. Yet that doesn’t mean the classics of literature have faded away. They are around — often referenced in new forms or adapted completely. Continue reading...Teachers at WorkA column about teachingThese Are a Few of My Favorite Things January 4, 2011 By Michele Dunaway
Teacher/novelist Michele Dunaway writes, "as much as I preach individual choice in reading, I do believe there should be some literary works that everyone in middle and high school reads and experiences." Here Michele shares some of her favorite teaching touchstones.
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Article Topics:Teachers at WorkA column about teachingThe Dead Letter Classroom December 7, 2010 By Michele Dunaway
Michele Dunaway, a teacher of English and journalism, writes: "In our haste to have students prep for standardized tests, English education has left behind a very important area: writing the letter."
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