Hey guys, sorry to keep everyone in suspense, I suck at blogging. Luckily the lovely Maggie Cardin got on my case about updating so here you go. The biggest thing to happen to me in the past couple of weeks was presenting at the PATELA (PA Teachers of Engl and Lang Arts) conference in Pittsburgh. I was apart of a 4 person panel of MU students presenting papers from last semester. The paper was from my Teaching Writing class and was a part of my Writing partners project. For this project we were paired with a freshman composition student and asked to identify a weakness in their writing and work with that student to fix it. The presentation went really well, but the highlight of the conference was listening to published authors talk. One woman, Linda Christensen, is the author of a book titled Writing for Joy and Social Justice. She is an ENGL teacher in Portland Oregon (shout out to Augusta) and she does some amazing things. Showed us this video of a slam poet, for those of you who don't know slam poetry is very rhythmic powerful poetry similar to freestyle rap, and besides making me tear up, also has very serious possibilities for the classroom. Take a look.
I also heard an author named chris crutcher speek. He write young adult novels usually centered around sports and does an awesome job of engaging teenage boys. In addition to this, everyone of his novels is banned in schools for their heavy subject matter and language. Chris was an amazing speaker and such an awesome story teller. I cant wait to use his stuff in my class. This is a short video of chris speaking about being banned which gives an awesome sense of who he is.
So anyway life is good. I'm busy and i'm tired but I love it. I ask that you guys keep me in your thoughts and prayers as I deal with everything on my plate. I recently had a student who lost his father very suddenly and it's tough to know what to say and do as a teacher. Hope you all are well I'd love to have you comment on here. I'll leave you with one last video thats been inspiring me recently.
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