Classroom Practice

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, many families were devastated. Schools were closed for a week or more. Children and adults were stranded.

I hate sheet protectors. Those shiny, clear plastic sheaths have no place in my classroom. When my new ninth-graders hand in their summer reading logs each September, the first thing I do is remove and return all the sheet protectors. They make it impossible for me to maintain my neat stacks of student work. They don’t quite fit into the file folders I use to transport those stacks home to grade them. I have to remove them before I can write any feedback.

Greg arrived at my art room after school to pick up a bulky project. He seemed down.

“Is everything ok?” I asked.

It’s hard to think of coat hooks as being instructional tools. Last year, however, my students and I learned some important lessons about the benefits of diversity and including many voices in the decision-making process when we restructured our closets.

I don’t often lecture in class. In general, I prefer to run more of a seminar-like discussion. Teaching British literature this year, however, presented an unusual opportunity to test some technology and flip my lesson.

I was excited by my lesson plan about the presidential elections. I planned to help students research issues and form opinions by guiding them through a variety of perspectives. Then my student teacher asked a question that surprised me. “Do you ever have parents complain about elections being discussed in school?” he wanted to know. “Why would they?” I asked.