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
Fri Jun 12 00:00:00 EDT 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
Tue Apr 28 00:00:00 EDT 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?
Fri Mar 06 00:00:00 EST 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
Fri Dec 05 00:00:00 EST 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?
Fri Oct 24 00:00:00 EDT 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."

These are just a few samples of the "Teachers at Work" articles published recently. To view them all, click here.