LEAF AND PEN
  • Home
  • About
  • What We Do
    • Writing Retreats for Educators
    • NYC Workshops and PD
    • Radical Educators
    • Writing Retreats for Students
    • Essay Coaching
  • Who We Are
  • Contact
  • Blog

The Top Ten Things Educators Talk About When They “Just” Write

11/17/2019

2 Comments

 

Teachers, do you write? Why or why not?
​Please talk freely!

Picture
Dear Fellow Teachers,
 
This week, I’m heading to NCTE, the annual convention of the National Council of Teachers of English. (#NCTE19 is in Baltimore, this year, so send your local eating and touristing recommendations.)
 
One of my presentations at NCTE will share some research on what happens when teachers write. I plan on discussing the top two or three themes that came out of my research. I thought I’d use my blog to post the full top ten I worked with, for anyone who’s interested. I’m hoping it will spark some discussion, so please comment at the bottom of this post.

Best,
Eve

A little story

Here’s a little story about my transition from writing and editing, which I did for the first two decades of my career, to teaching English, which I’ve now done for just about as long. I was in my early 40s and I had a young child. In my first year of full-time classroom teaching, I had a hundred-fifty students, and was learning on the job. On top of that, I had to get a master’s degree to get certified to teach in New York State, so I applied to a somewhat fly-by-night teaching program. Upon enrollment, students were asked to submit a short essay on an assigned topic, to demonstrate writing fluency. At this point, I was the author of thirty young adult novels including a few bestsellers, and a variety of short pieces for adults. I’d been far too busy as a brand-new teacher to do any writing, and this was a good excuse. I wrote something invested and poignant and lovely—at least I thought it was. I got a letter back from the school. Is this your thesis statement? Where are your topic sentences? Apparently their definition of essay and mine were not the same.
 
I tried again; I think I was required to. I did it just the way my mentor teacher at my new job had instructed our 8th grade students to do it. I boiled water, opened up the cellophane package, and dropped in the noodles and contents of the flavor packet. Presto! Ye olde five-paragraph essay. Which by the way, I’d never

Read More
2 Comments

    Eve's Blog

    I've been blogging since 2010. When I've got writer's block in every other way (frequent), this low stakes riffing to think has been a constant. Over the digital years, I've had a half dozen or so blogs including a travel blog and a reading blog, both on Blogger, and an all-purpose blog on tumblr where I wrote about education, social equity and anything else that sparked me. I also posted some of my published print work on my website. My shit is all over the internet. I'll be using this space for the occasional blog post, now.

    Archives

    December 2021
    November 2021
    April 2021
    October 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    November 2019
    September 2019
    July 2019
    August 2018

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

No pen, no ink, no time, no quiet, no inclination."
                                                         --James Joyce
  • Home
  • About
  • What We Do
    • Writing Retreats for Educators
    • NYC Workshops and PD
    • Radical Educators
    • Writing Retreats for Students
    • Essay Coaching
  • Who We Are
  • Contact
  • Blog