Classroom Practice

B loves bugs. I met him during the first week of school as I conducted the standard assessment of how many words he could read per minute from a second-grade story. After the assessment, I gave him the customary caterpillar sticker to put on his shirt to show everyone that he was going to emerge as a great reader during his second-grade year.

One of the surest ways to motivate students to not only write, but to write with passion, purpose and power, is to make sure they have an authentic audience. This means they must write for somebody other than me, their teacher. Students must know that there is power in their words and that they can be heard. 

In my household, where my husband and I are both high school English teachers, we generally do not watch movies or TV shows about our profession during the school year. In nearly every teacher movie I can think of, there’s a clear message: If teachers just worked harder, students would succeed. I should be like Erin Gruwell of Freedom Writers, who sacrifices her marriage for her students, who works two jobs to buy new books for her class and who, ultimately, leaves teaching after just a few years. Depictions like these perpetuate the myth that all it takes are a few good martyrs. When they burn out, just hire some more.