Difficulties and Challenges

What is one of the most difficult and challenging parts of your teaching?  If you could assure that your students left your classroom with ONE thing what would that be?  What is it that makes this such a challenge?  I am not looking for answers here as much as thoughts about one thing you would like to be different.  It could be anything...such as "I wish my students would talk more in class discussions" or "I would like to have better classroom control."  What is the one thing that keeps you up at night and makes you crazy?

Writing History

Who are you as a writer?  What are the memories you have as a writer?  If these are hard to remember try making a timeline for yourself and writing down all of the different memories you have from the earliest to the most recent.  Take some time to write down your history and what you think defines you as a writer.

Reading Reflections

Take some time to reread what you have read in our text through chapter 8.  Choose a line and write to that line to reflect on your thinking as a teacher of writing.  What shifts are you starting to see in terms of your teaching?  They can be very small or very large.  What facilitated this change in your thinking?

Take some time to browse through the DVD.  Choose a part to watch and then reflect on it.  What did it make you think about?  What did you notice about Penny's teaching that is something you could try?  How does this make you think differently about your students?  What do you notice?

Welcome and Wonderings...

Welcome to our blog. Please take a few minutes to write down some of the questions you are wondering about in terms of your teaching. What are those unanswerable questions that keep you up at night? What are you wondering about after reading the article? I will use these questions as a springboard for our next class discussion.