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Laak Woodworks, Berthoud, CO

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With the wit and engaging personality of a born storyteller, Fitz connects with his students and inspires them to write confidently and effectively in their own voices. He taught our son the fundamentals of excellent writing through critical analysis of poetry, song lyrics, classic literature, blogs and video essays. Thanks to Fitz’ guidance and support, our son is excelling at Vanderbilt University.

~Dave Ruediger

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Remember the Time

by Fitz | June 23, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 25 Comments

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

by Fitz | June 22, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 0 Comments

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

by Fitz | June 22, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 0 Comments

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…

by Fitz | June 18, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog | 19 Comments

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

by Fitz | June 16, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 0 Comments

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

by Fitz | June 14, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 0 Comments

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

by Fitz | June 12, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 0 Comments

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

by Fitz | June 9, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog | 0 Comments

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

by Fitz | June 8, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 0 Comments

"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

by Fitz | June 6, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog | 0 Comments

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…

by Fitz | May 11, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog | 0 Comments

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

by Fitz | May 5, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog | 0 Comments

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

by Fitz | April 22, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 2 Comments

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

by Fitz | April 16, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 21 Comments

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

by Fitz | April 12, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 0 Comments

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

by Fitz | April 11, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 1 Comment

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…

by Fitz | April 11, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 0 Comments

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…

by Fitz | April 10, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 0 Comments

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

by Fitz | April 9, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 0 Comments

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

by Fitz | April 7, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 0 Comments

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

by Fitz | April 6, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog | 1 Comment

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

by Fitz | March 24, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog | 2 Comments

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”

by Fitz | March 13, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog | 24 Comments

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

by Fitz | March 13, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 0 Comments

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

by Fitz | March 13, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 1 Comment

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

by Fitz | February 26, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog | 1 Comment

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

by Fitz | February 18, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 1 Comment

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

by Fitz | February 10, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 0 Comments

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

by Fitz | January 29, 2020 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 17 Comments

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

by Fitz | December 8, 2019 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 28 Comments

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?

by Fitz | December 2, 2019 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 20 Comments

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

by Fitz | November 24, 2019 | Essays, Poem of the Day, The Crafted Word Blog | 24 Comments

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...

Me & Rocky…

by Fitz | November 17, 2019 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Write | 23 Comments

Take your foot off the brakes, but keep your eyes on the road~FitzOnce, back in my days as a logger, I cut through a big white oak. I didn't realize that the trunk was mostly rotten and hollow until my chain saw was most of the way through the monstrous tree. After...

The Uses and Abuses of Rhetoric

by Fitz | November 16, 2019 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 0 Comments

So What’s Your Point?The Uses and Abuses of RhetoricKnowing that you do not understand is a virtue;  Not knowing that you do not understand is a defect. —Lao TzuNobody likes to be wrong, and for that matter, most of us “like” to be right. Few of us walk around...

It’s time for a change…

by Fitz | November 14, 2019 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog | 7 Comments

https://youtu.be/6W7xnYQGlg4 Let the chips fall where they will...My entire adult life has been spent writing personal essays. I fact, whenever I write anything else—a song, a poem, or a story—I can trace its birth to some essay I have previously written. Personal...

Passion…

by Fitz | November 5, 2019 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog | 23 Comments

Does this video really have anything to do with English? It was posted by a friend--who is easily the most talented musician I know--so I watched, more out of a shop teacher's curiosity of "how things are made." What strikes me most is not the skill of the violin...

The State of Maine

by Fitz | October 31, 2019 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog | 19 Comments

I wrote this short story about twenty years ago after hearing an old folk tale retold by Jerry Bell. I took the gist of the story and remade it as a story set in a prison in Maine to retell myself as a story. Eerily similar to The Shawshank Redemption—though Hollywood...

The Power of Simplicity

by Fitz | October 14, 2019 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 6 Comments

Years ago I wrote in my journal that my goal in life was to be small, be simple, be wise, be happy, and above all be ready. I cannot honestly say that I have achieved all of these goals, but these are still the “ideals” I strive to live in my life. These are my...

Appophobia

by Fitz | October 3, 2019 | Collaborate, Create, Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 26 Comments

Appophobia: 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 willingness to explore and...

Ah, grading…

by Fitz | September 20, 2019 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 22 Comments

I am just about to sit down, sip on a cup of tea and grade your essays. Sometimes it is daunting to look at the list of submissions--then look at all the other things in life I need to do--and find the energy to begin...but it is what I have to do. I trusted you to do...

The Gift of Words

by Fitz | September 16, 2019 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 21 Comments

If you want to learn to write well, start writing and do not stop. If you do not want to learn to write well, this will be a wasted class—empty time leading towards a deeper emptiness. We are all born communicators. We all feel angst when our words are misunderstood,...

Creating a Digital Workflow

by Fitz | September 12, 2019 | Create, Essays, Share, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops, Write | 7 Comments

So much of school can—and often is—hard, but what should be easy, should be made easy. Finding, creating, and submitting assignments should be easy. Receiving timely assessments and grade updates should be an expectation of every student and a practice of every...

A Better LMS

by Fitz | June 10, 2019 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog | 0 Comments

Finding the Right Learning Management System A fight worth fighting An LMS is simply an online or app-based learning management system—an all-encompassing term for how and what a school (or a business) uses to create and manage its online courses, including:...

The Silver Apples of the Moon

by Fitz | May 12, 2019 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 12 Comments

The most powerful and enduring connection we share as a human race is our desire and need to share stories. We engage in the art of storytelling more than most of us ever realize; whether we are describing our kids’ soccer games, critiquing the latest HBO series, telling a ribald joke, or remembering a long lost friend, event, memory, book, or experience.

Tell your story. Tell it well.

by Fitz | April 27, 2019 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 31 Comments

Some thoughts from the trenches... Not everything can be put into a box. For years I have been trying to teach middle school and high school age boys “how to write” by using a series of extremely detailed rubrics that leave little to chance, but maybe (I...

Reflecting on Literature

by Fitz | April 13, 2019 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops, Write | 27 Comments

I am constantly asking my students (and myself) to reflect on the literature they, and I, read. As I have grown older—and not necessarily wiser—I find myself only reading literature that I am sure will prod me out of my intellectual and emotional torpor, like a...

Reflect

by Fitz | April 11, 2019 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 0 Comments

The Paradox of Rubric-Based Writing

by Fitz | April 9, 2019 | Essays, Rubrics, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 2 Comments

What a boring title…rubric-based writing…I am sure this would be a big seller on Amazon: “Buy Now and Save on Fitz’s Narrative Paragraph Rubric!” Frustration guaranteed! Used by hundreds of angry students…And I could on and and on because I have heard it all,...

The Yankee Cannonball

by Fitz | March 12, 2019 | Create, Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops, Write | 23 Comments

I stood in a long line waiting with Pipo for his first ever ride on a roller coaster. Things that move in strange ways are a big deal to him. When he first came to live with us, he was eight years old and had never even been in a two story house. On his second day...

Read…

by Fitz | April 4, 2016 | Essays, The Crafted Word Blog, Workshops | 0 Comments

Read... The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever. It is worth the expense of...

Fitz is remarkable as a writing teacher for a number of reasons: for his help with technique, for his impressive role-modeling, and for his inspiring personality. I wanted to write well when I wrote for Fitz!

~Paul Michaud

Winner: The Groton School Writing Prize, 2018

With the wit and engaging personality of a born storyteller, Fitz connects with his students and inspires them to write confidently and effectively in their own voices. He taught our son the fundamentals of excellent writing through critical analysis of poetry, song lyrics, classic literature, blogs and video essays. Thanks to Fitz’s guidance and support, our son is excelling at Vanderbilt University.

~Dave Reudiger

John has tutored all three of my boys. He engages his students with a creative, effective and dynamic toolset that includes technology, humor, compassion and a deep knowledge of students to enhance and deepen his or her writing skills and self-confidence.

~Gari Palmer

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