composition

Aside from the Five Paragraph Essay (which you all now know I hate), I am also opposed to standardized testing. There are many intellectual reasons why I am against this form of assessment (see here for an example), especially for writing, but there are also broader, more critical reasons why I believe they should not be given. Standardized testing is essentially a ranking system, an educational class system. It put students "in their places." We are made to believe that the smart kids do well on the tests, go to the best colleges, and get the best jobs because they are "the best and the brightest." Those who aren't naturally the best and the brightest can become so by working hard and studying diligently. It has already been shown, however, that students of color, the working class, and women have traditionally done poorer on these exams, and it is not because they are any less intelligent, but because they cater to a white-male-middle/upper class dominant cult...

If your writing strategy is absurdly demonstrated as a cheeseburger, then it's probably absurd. The other night, I sat on Twitter talking to colleagues about the Five Paragraph Essay (which, yes, I do hate). The argument was about purpose and whether it was useful. I argued that the Five Paragraph Essay is like playing Hot Cross Buns; sure, you're making music, but it's only three notes, neither deep nor complex. The argument I got back was something along the lines of  "15-year-olds don't have much to say anyway." According to this colleague, their thoughts are simply not deep or complex (I am happy to say that my Twitter colleague eventually rethought this statement). I think this idea is at the core of some of our very real problems in education. We believe our students, simply because they are novices, have nothing to say. As a result, we fail to challenge them. Even worse, we fail to listen to them. Expediently Killing a Generation: An Intellectual Holoca...

September 11 -- Never Forget Sunday marked the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001. "Where were you when you found out?" was a question asked over and over. As a resident of central New Jersey and daughter of a downtown NYC business owner, the events of September 11 were very real and scary for me. I remember exactly where I was when I found out what had happened. It was the end of first period, US History, my sophomore year of high school, less than a week before my 15th birthday. A neighboring teacher told our teacher to turn on CNN. We saw the damage of the first plane crash, and we watched the second plane crash live. It didn't seem real. The gravity of it sunk in as the day went on. This was the scene I watched when I first learned about the World Trade Center being hit during class. Nothing of substance happened in school that day. In every class, we watched the broadcast. A friend and I hugged each other and cried. My cousin found me in the hallway, and we calle...