Blogs on English Language Arts

"We want to find a person behind the pen." -- Professional Writing Retreat Handbook

Last weekend I attempted to draft an inspirational message for my English education majors. Maybe because I haven't yet mastered a grownup man voice -- I'm 48 -- or because of the paragraph's naked sentimentality, the passage sounded fake and bloated, like words pushed through a megaphone: too much volume, not enough texture, and a void where there should have been confidence. To find out more about what was missing, I turned to science.

Positive relationships are the foundation of any successful classroom and particularly one that includes English-Language Learners (ELL). Teachers must learn about their students' experiences and backgrounds in order to connect them to new learning. Teachers also need to know what their students are interested in and what their goals are in order to create lessons which engage them and are relevant to their lives. When teachers get to know their students, they can make better decisions about the curriculum, instructional strategies, classroom management, assessment, pacing, and the list goes on.

Question: How can you help colleagues integrate social, emotional learning (SEL)-related approaches into existing curriculum and instruction and reconnect with their key role as relationship builders and inspirers of student engagement?

Day after day, Alone on a hill,
The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still
But nobody wants to know him,
They can see that he's just a fool,
And he never gives an answer,

This poem was on the blackboard when I walked into Mr. Cooper's fifth grade classroom in 1975. Soon we were listening to the Beatles sing the Fool on the Hill and interpreting the poem as a class. This brief introduction to contemporary poets was the hook for a project that transformed my future: the Personal Poetry Book Project.