"All this happened, more or less."

I’m going to break blogging protocol and begin with the admission that you probably aren’t about to read something you haven’t read before. So why will this post continue on with approximately 1,000 more words? It’s simple: the divide between English teachers who embrace workshop practices and those who don’t continues, and I want to add to the throng of voices who assure even the most adamantly opposed to workshop that it can, and does, work wonders. First, let me share a brief overview of my teaching experience. I taught pre-AP (Honors) English 4 for one year. That was a dream! With no standardized test to prepare for, I had the freedom to construct a curriculum that focused on creative and real-world writing. We read. We wrote. We reflected. We repeated. We became better readers, writers, and thinkers. Note two things here: 1.      I say “we” because I instinctively felt that I should write along with my students. Teachers of writing should write. 2. ...

As a newcomer to the 2017 NWP and NCTE conferences, I walked around in a perpetual state of astonishment and sensory overload. The one refrain that reverberated through my mind, other than “free books,” was the concept of Tikkun Olum , roughly translated as “repair the world.” First conveyed during the NWP plenary and repeated by several presenters throughout the NCTE conference, I had heard this phrase previously through my Holocaust studies coursework at UT Dallas and through training with the Holocaust Educator Network. The phrase represents a belief which I hold dear, but hearing it again from a variety of presenters at the conferences underscored just how important it is for each of us to repair the parts of the world in which we live. Teachers have the unique opportunity to encourage young people to do the same, as most of us see over one hundred children daily throughout the school-year and spend more time with them, on average, than the other adults in...

A couple of years ago, my daughter and I had the privilege of hearing engineer, physician, astronaut, actress, and dancer Mae Jemison speak at UT Dallas. She asked those who believed they were right-brained to raise their hands. Photo credit: wikipedia.org I raised my hand. Next, she asked those who believed they were left-brained to raise their hands. I kept my hand in the air. Not knowing where this was going, I expected the classical argument about how one hemisphere rules each of us more than the other, and that we should cater to that side. Waiting for Jemison’s response, I mused… How many times do teachers hear students confirm “I’m a math person” or “English just isn’t my thing” or “I can’t draw”? By high school, students have categorized themselves according to what they believe they can and can’t do, and school sometimes reinforces these foolish notions by separating content areas by subject, curriculum design, and even areas of the building. ...

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to participate in a North Star of Texas Writing Project summer institute. The colleague who recommended me for the program informed me of the impact that the experience would have on my teaching, but I had no idea that I would come to define my career by pre- and post-workshop.   Not only did I write like I hadn’t written in years – both in terms of variety of genres and in sheer quantity – but I also formed deep connections with teachers across content areas. I remembered what it feels like to be a student and a writer. I learned how authentic reading and writing workshop works miracles. This corresponded with my chosen inquiry. As a fairly new AP English literature teacher whose conscious didn’t feel at peace with a narrow test-prep approach with a standard survey of British literature, I researched the pedagogical principles that supported choice in the classroom. I sought to incorporate choice into a workshop-based AP course th...