Category: Uncategorized
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Building a Sequoia Root System
The largest tree in the world is the sequoia redwood, coming in at upwards of 2,600,000 pounds and heights taller than a football field. It follows that a tree that big must have an enormous root system to stay upright, especially in the face of the earthquakes, forest fires, and atmospheric rivers of California, right?…
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Postcard from NCTE #3: Why I’m Making 2023 the Year of Poetry in My Classes
This is the third and final of my reflections from the NCTE Convention. For the first two, click here and here. “Poems give us something to hold up to the light, to examine from different angles” –Brett Vogelsinger Before winter break, I began my final unit of this quickly waning semester on Living Poets, and,…
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Postcard from NCTE #2: Building Better, Stronger Classroom Communities in 2023
This is the second in a series of postcards of my key takeaways from the National Teacher’s of English Conference in November. It also marks my last post of 2022. I hope all those reading have a good, healthy, and restful break! Regular readers will know that Matt Kay, one of my co-authors of Answers…
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Letting Them Drive: How to Help Students Through the Beautiful Messiness of the Writing Process
A few weeks ago at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Annual Convention, I sat next to a teacher from Palmdale, California for an afternoon session. The teacher was buzzing with excitement as he told me the story of how he’d come to be there that day: His district, being local, had an…
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A Quick Guide to Praise, Compliments, and Asset-Focused Instruction
Educators are some of the most positive people I know, and yet studies from the last 40 years have consistently shown that when teachers respond to students, both in person and in writing, they tend to overwhelmingly focus on the negatives and deficits: The praise to criticism/reprimand ratios seen in these and similar studies can…
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How a Simple Notebook Revolutionized My Ability to Track Student Data
Every night before bed, my wife takes a few minutes to document the ups, downs, advances, and milestones of our children. I have to admit that at first I was somewhat agnostic about the practice. I’ve always had a pretty good memory, so I think at some level I was certain that I would remember…
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How the Volleyball Effect Hurts Deeper Learning (And What to Do About It)
The start of the school year, as it seemingly does every year, has reminded me that schools are often overwhelming places. The pure number of humans and classes and lessons that populate our schools each day is enough to make one’s head spin. Of course, this hustle and bustle isn’t all bad. The energy can…
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Starting the Year With a Sea of Stories
A quick note from Matt: Today is the first day of the 2022-2023 school year in Ann Arbor, which means that along with this post, this is the first Monday that I will post my weekly Essay of the Week entries. Check them out here, if you are interested! The title of today’s post is…
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What Should We Do With Writing Formulas and Rules? An Interview with Jennifer Fletcher on Teaching Writing Rhetorically
I was initially hoping to release my first-ever videos this week, but it turns out that video production has a bit of a learning curve and video uploading takes a VERY long time. The videos are nearly ready though, so look for them early next week! Instead, I wanted to share something really special with…
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How I Plan to Regain My Nights and Weekends in the Upcoming School Year
My last post on how to cultivate student writing identities was maybe closer to a novella than a blogpost, so this week I am striving to keep it shorter and simpler. In keeping with the theme of brevity, I want to talk about the ways that I plan to keep the work monster at bay…
Matthew M. Johnson 