
This is the second post in a short series on small but fierce tools that can boost your writing instruction in the matter of a few minutes. For the original entry, click here.
For me at least, the last 18 months haven’t exactly been the ideal in regards to professional development. I have read far fewer teaching books, written even fewer posts about teaching, and attended only one (online) teaching conference, instead spending the hours normally allocated to those things just making it through the day in a way that is reminiscent of my first years of teaching.
During many moments this lack of time and space to grow has been a source of frustration, but recently I’ve been thinking a lot about how the dark screens of Zoom, the divided focus of hybrid teaching, or the endless fire drills of this fall have brought their own meaningful lessons too.
And of those lessons, the one that I have been thinking about a lot recently is how absolutely crucial classroom community–which is so often cast as periphery, nice-if-you-can-do-it-but-not-essential topic–is to doing the work we do at a high level.
Continue reading “Building Connections in a Disconnected Fall Through Micro-Sharing of Student Writing”