I never thought I’d become an educator, in any sense of the word. When I was an undergraduate, I wanted to be a marine biologist, not an educator. Well, chemistry really did a number on me, so I changed majors, moving from biology to secondary education with a focus on biology and minor in English. I am, for the most part, an introvert, and … Read More Why Do I Teach?
+ #ncte, higher education, middle school, national council teachers of english, Pedagogy, secondary education, students right to their own language
This semester, I am teaching an upper-level multicultural American literature course. Each of the students in this course are education majors, so as I prepared the syllabus, I was thinking about texts that would help them think about their own pedagogy in the classroom. With this thought in mind, I added texts such as Jacqueline Jones Royster’s “When the first voice you hear is … Read More NCTE Students’ Right to Their Own Language
A few days ago, someone asked me a question that made me stop and think. The person asked, “What do you produce as an English teacher?” The inquisitor did not posit the question in a derogatory manner; in fact, I firmly believe that the person asking the question wanted to legitimately understand what I do as an English teacher at a university. I paused … Read More “What do you produce as an English teacher?”
+ #ncte, adidas, african american literature, american literature, dorothy allison, english, fsa, language, owi, recitiatif, river of names, russell lee, southern literature, toni morrison, Uncategorized
The day after the 2017 Boston Marathon, the marathon’s sponsor, Adidas, sent an email to participants who completed the race. The subject line read, “Congrats, you survived the Boston Marathon.” On the surface, nothing appears wrong with this line; however, given the events at the marathon on April 15, 2013, when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev detonated two homemade bombs close to the finish line killing … Read More Language and Syntax in the Classroom
