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Beyond the Syllabus posts offer a round-up of resources that are “practice-adjacent,” as Katherine often says. We offer recs for podcasts, fiction and non, and TED talks that offer delightful – if surprising – ways to rethink or enrich discussion practice. This week, we tapped into the trend of self-paced learning, which has become especially…
We often use metaphors to describe what we do in the classroom. Do those metaphors help us, or do they hurt us?
Nourish yourself.
“Optimism is an explanatory process… it’s the narrative you tell that allows you to move forward.”
“For me, especially as a young teacher who’s still trying to figure it out, I’ll have students who will try to take the conversation in a completely different direction than what I had planned. Then I start to get worried, and I feel I have to reel the entire class back in. My mentor, though, challenged me to let it happen and then take advantage of the tangent. I’m trying to learn to do that, instead of letting it bother me.”
Experienced online teachers show a preference for, and a desire for more, student-centered practices. Their voices can remind innovators where to focus.
“I’m working with a professor from grad school to bring authentic texts into vocabulary instruction that amplify diverse voices and expose students to issues of justice and equity. I’m interested in how we can promote a love of words as we teach students to think about their world.”
A style guide that should be ubiquitous in schools, new research in Black girls’ experiences in PWIs, and a call to courage from Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring.”
“I love the silence when we’re all together in a moment when someone’s said something that really lands. It’s an ineffable presence, not even contained in a voice. We’re all considering or holding something together — it’s that intimate kind of silence where you don’t need to speak. I teach for those kinds of moments.”
“One thing I love is when a student has that a-ha moment where they connect the concept we’re discussing with some kind of real world knowledge where the text matters. I also love when a student really listens to learn and then states that he/she has changed his or her mind.”
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