We came to believe we had an obligation to provide our students with what we call a “cultural toolkit.” What authors (for better or worse) once presumed to be a common body of knowledge is increasingly less common: Greek and Roman mythology, the works of Shakespeare, the Bible, and even fairy tales written by the brothers Grimm, not Disney.
If you asked us to choose the most important thing to cover in an ELA class, we’d probably choose argumentative…
“My students hate reading. Please help.” We see this message, or some variation of it, at least once a day…
Rain on your wedding day is a lot of things, but without context, it’s not ironic. Alanis Morrisette’s “Ironic” describes…
It can feel overwhelming to sort through the materials provided by your district or textbook publisher. This is exacerbated by looking at a pacing guide that seems to suggest other teachers are flying through every activity in a number of days that seems wildly unrealistic for your students (spoiler alert: those pacing guides are unrealistic for every classroom!).
Steph kind of hates The Lion King. We know. Bold statement for someone who attended elementary school in the 90s….