“English, Please!”
Hi, I’m Tom. Two years ago, I returned to grad school to improve the content of my middle and high school English instruction. I strive to teach high-level critical thinking to ELA students without students wishing I would instruct “in English, please”.
Teaching Goals
- Focus on real world skills: clear expression of ideas, media literacy, organization
- Active and engaging instruction
- Promote intellectual thought: pursue new ideas and consider diverse perspectives
- Prioritize learning over grades
Blog Goals
- Easily skimmable, digestible, plain English writing
- Offer fellow teachers resources for effective instruction
- Build on diverse existing work and publications (from teachers themselves to academic journals)
- Create useful content that can be readily apply to teaching
Categories
Theory
Posts will bring high-level theory from literary and cultural studies down to plain English. My goal is to make theory accessible and easily-digestible for teachers who may not have access (or time!) to the graduate work I am fortunate to have access to. They will also serve as the first step in my process of molding elaborate schools of thought into bite-sized chunks and lessons that students can make sense of and apply to literature.
Analysis
These posts apply critical theory to featured texts. Posts may include spin-offs of grad school assignments or real-world ELA planning. Or they may function as a method for me to flesh out my thinking on new concepts.
Pedagogy
This category will feature writing specifically about teaching, demonstrating ways to deliver ideas (either based on posts in the Theory, Application, or YA Reading categories) to students that help me reach my teaching goals.
YA Reading
The category will highlight, review, and discuss diverse YA fiction, both new and old. They will be a book talk with the intended audience of ELA teachers, suggesting where it may fit in the curriculum, prevalent themes, and potential discussion questions.
Recent Posts
“Why Teach Theory with YA?”
Note: Prior to drafting this post, I was recommended a piece by Randy Ribay that not only said what I would have written more clearly, but it expanded my ideas of what was possible and quelled some of my anxiety about incorporating critical theory in the classroom. You can find Ribay’s post here: “Critical Lit…
Ideology Critique in Akwaeke Emezi’s Pet
Note: As I take on the task of delivering concepts from critical scholarship to my students, I have to reflect on how I best learn the ideas myself. For many ideas, the primary documents from which these concepts emerge are, let’s admit, painful to comprehend. After semesters of googling key terms in order to find…
Future Theory Exploration
When I sat down to write my first post in the “Theory” category, I had three objectives. Keep explanations concise (<1000 words) for the sake of readability. Explain with teachers who are unfamiliar with the content in mind. Consider how students would digest and apply these new ideas. When I finished, I was surprised to…
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English, Please 