A Teachers Journal
Thoughts, ramblings & musings of an ordinary teacher
Remember the Time
Write what you know. ~Mark Twain I don’t always practice what I preach, especially when it comes to the simple, unaffected, and ordinary “journal entry.” Much of my reticence towards the casual journal entry is the public nature of posting our journal writing as...
Remote Learning 2.0
Explore, Assess, Reflect & Rethink How to move on to a better tomorrow... For most of us teachers, our first crash course in remote learning is done, and the wise work now is to separate the wheat from the chaff and truly assess what works and what can be...
The Farmer, the Weaver & The Space Traveler
Words matter. Words carefully crafted and artfully expressed matter infinitely more. There is something compelling in a turn of phrase well-timed, arresting image juxtaposed on arresting images; broad ideas distilled into clear, lucid singular thought. For the...
Swing, dammit, swing…
What’s so important about this literary analysis paragraph thing? Maybe you won’t be spending your life analyzing literature. Maybe this is some academic exercise that is ultimately no big deal in the greater scheme of your life.Or maybe it is…You will always be...
Embrace the Beast
The Rules of Punctuation If you don’t use it, you lose it... ~Fitz What do you really need to learn? What teaching and what practice will help you learn what you “really need to learn” in a way that will somehow stay with you and be useful and necessary to...
Ten Tips for a Great Narrative Essay
So much depends on the red wheelbarrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens. -William Carlos Williams It was funto be swimming and clambering around with my kids yesterday in a remote stream in the Berkshires and thinking: "This would be a cool...
Writing a Metacognition
If we don’t learn from what we do, we learn little of real value. If we don’t make the time to explore, reflect and rethink our ways of doing things, we will never grow, evolve and reach our greatest potential or tap into the possibilities in our lives.
I have been here before
Trying to pull a final day Back into the night, execute Some stay of time, Some way to wrap The fabric of Summer Around the balky, frame of Fall, sloughing My skin, unable to stop This reptilian ecdysis— This hideous morphing Into respectability. My students, tame As...
Grading
"Don't let school interfere with your education..."~Mark Twain Grading is that part of a teacher's life that should bring some kind of solace to our work. No doubt, it is an arduous chore most of the time for the sheer amount of time it takes to do...
The Concord Town Dump
When I was a kid it was the dump. Every Saturday morning my father and I would pile a week’s worth of trash into the back of our Plymouth Fury station wagon and head the to the Concord town dump. Back then the dump was a place of perpetually burning fires and massive...
Fenn Speaks…
I am You, and You are me... Give a damn & figure it out I feel like one of my students: it’s the night before my big presentation at All-school-meeting, and I still don’t know what I am going to talk about. I just know I am supposed to...
John Adams and Me
From the deck of my sister’s house on the Oregon coast, I can see the breakers lumbering in as the heavy morning fog slowly burns away. In true west coast style, I brewed a coffee that is strong and pungent and will guide me through my own morning fog. I was...
Welcome to The Crafted Word
I have been teaching, writing, playing and performing for over thirty-five years, while during these last ten years I have been given the time and space and support (and funds) to create a classroom and pedagogy that through stops and starts...
Ten Writing Genres
Doing something which is “different” does not come easily to most of us. The wrestling team I coach will look at me sideways if I ask them to practice cartwheels. I’ve even heard that some professional football teams bring in dance instructors to teach their behemoth...
COLLABORATE
The Art of Collaboration Danny, Jimmy & Me I Mrs. Roeber never seemed to let Jimmy go outside, which, to my thinking as an 11 year old, was why he was so smart. Most days after school, I’d rush two houses down the street and get Danny Gannon to come out...
Teach Like a Shop Teacher
Teaching Traditional & Modern Skills for Reading, Writing, Creating & Sharing in a Digital World Create a Better Classroomfor You & Your Students Teaching Traditional & Modern Skills for Reading, Writing, Creating & Sharing in a Digital WorldTeach...
ASSESS…
Thoughts on Assessment Assessment is a terrifying word. I know my students fear it is just a softer term for the harshness of grading–an even more terrifying word, but if we do not assess everything we do, we become the proverbial bearers of repeated...
SHARE…
Digital Damnation As teachers, it is critical that we teach our students how to leverage the power of the web to create, cultivate, and curate positive digital footprints in and out of the classroom; moreover, as mentors and role models, we need to do the same....
CREATE
Appophobia Appophobia: (n) A lingering fear and distrust of apps Always do what you are afraid to do. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson We have evolved into what we are because we have somehow learned to balance mistrust and wariness of danger with a counterbalancing...
WRITE
Don't Do It I was eighteen and designing a production line for making stepladders at Fitchburgh State College—the only college I could afford, and probably the only place that would have me. I remember thinking, ‘Man, this ain’t no life for me.’ I barely...
Making a Poem Better
So, you finished your “poem” in whatever genre of poetry you are writing, and you turn it in and proudly think, ‘There is no way any teacher can grade me down after I poured my heart and soul onto the page!” And you know, I...
Keep The Passion Alive
The Power of Descriptive Writing Tell Your Story Our minds shift gears when filled with imagery: either we slow down and smell the flowers or we shift into a higher gear, and our minds become alive with the power and rush that only images and actions can...
Nobody Told Me to Read “The Odyssey”
Some of the words you’ll find within yourself; The rest, some power will inspire you to say. The Odyssey, ~Book 3, Lines 29-20 Nobody ever told me to read The Odyssey—and that was the greatest educational travesty of my life. I first read it after High School while...
Teaching in the New Reality
Online Learning 1.0 Yikes! We teachers are being asked on the fly to be ready to shift to “online learning.” Schools might be—and some already are—closing their doors for as yet undefined periods of time. The Luddites amongst us are aghast while those geeky,...
Build It & They Will Come
I'm sitting here thinking of that old baseball movie where Kevin Costner builds a baseball field in some remote cornfield, and by the magic of the game itself, people begin to flock to that reinvigorated part of the earth. I'm wondering if the same magic can, could,...
A Reflection
Close Your Eyes & See A lot of things in life fall short of the mark, but thoughtfulness has never let me down. For some forty years I have faithfully kept journals of the wanderings of my mind—most of which is lost in some way or another, but the effect...
Assess
A Shop Teacher’s Thoughts on How To Create True Assessment Assessment is a terrifying word. I know my students fear it is just a softer term for the harshness of grading--an even more terrifying word, but if we do not assess everything we do, we become the...
What Writer’s Do
This is perhaps the biggest thunderstorm that I haven’t been in. The lightning is flashing and bolting to the ground, and the thunder is booming in every direction—though it is all five miles away. Here there is no wind or rain. The sky is bright directly overhead,...
The Poet’s Arrow
As with most poets trying to write a poem—in any style— the difficult part is getting started. In the complex swirl of life there might seem to be too many options, or not enough, and so a young poet may look like a confused archer in a chaotic battlefield. What a...
The Great Essay Robbery
Good writers borrow. Great writers steal...And for these essays you are writing, steal from yourself.All of you--both my 8th and 9th grades students--are smack dab in the middle of writing your essays. Everybody is under the gun timewise to finish these essays, so...
What Makes Something Compelling?
Read. Write...and now CREATE and SHARE...Few of you would bake a cake and not eat it. Most of you, especially if you are proud of your cake, would want to share your cake.This is basically the idea behind your Odyssey Portfolio. Create something awesome. Share it.A...
Thanksgiving
https://youtu.be/V9H1ItMXuLQ Thanksgiving I am surprised sometimesby the suddenness of November:beauty abruptly shedto a common nakedness—grasses deadenedby hoarfrost,persistent memoriesof people I’ve lost.It is left to those of usdressed in the hardbarky...
