Few collections of poems—indeed, few literary works in general—intrigue, challenge, tantalize, and reward as do Shakespeare's Sonnets. Almost all of them love poems, the Sonnets philosophize, celebrat...

A friend gave me back a book I lent him a long while ago: The New Analog by @Damon Krukowski. (You should read it.) It was written post-streaming services but pre-pandemic and pre-AI. I leafed through...

Join me for this event R. Joseph Rodriguez presents: Youth Scribes and Their Writing Process in Action. Take a look!

A revisiting of Thomas Newkirk’s book The Art of Slow Reading in the new AI world.

What does the data tell us about reading rates by gender?

The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on the curation of a book collection.

YouTube video by CBS Sports

The OED is the definitive record of the English language, featuring 600,000 words, 3 million quotations, and over 1,000 years of English.

The problem we face is existential and spiritual, not situational.

High marks reward excellence, not grit.

Each year, I write my Annual Review. This page offers a complete list of the Annual Reviews I have written and explains my process.

The Three Bricklayers’ story illustrates the power of purpose. What is the 3 Bricklayers Story? A simple version goes that a person walked past a building project and asked three workers the same ques...

You can access my slides for this presentation at bit.ly/JBTroubledTimes

Can old-fashioned paper-and-pencil planning be cutting-edge? Yes, when it is a planner designed by master teacher Jim Burke, with space to dream big a...

Politicians on both the left and the right have sought to change or limit what teachers can do inside classrooms. Teachers often ignore them.

It’s not just about putting your phone away.

In this action-based post, Carl and Matt help you think about how to evaluate an instructional approach to writing. Downloadable PDF included.

Building your own panel of advisors is a simple technique to expand your perspectives and guide yourself through tough decisions. Think of people whose judgement and values you respect, add them to yo...

Let’s be real—not every student is going to talk, and maybe that’s OK.

Check out my five-part Education Week Teacher series on handling controversial topics in the classroom! “Mock Trials? Debates? Here’s a Better Way to Approach Supreme Court Decisions in Class…

“With a certain measure of pride, I felt myself becoming an ‘intellectual.’ ”

Programs designed to identify use of AI in student writing aren’t infallible, but there are other ways to promote authenticity in writing assignments.

“What we are doing by mechanizing encounters is bleeding out the unique and rather mysterious social outcome.”

I am entirely too busy today but had to take care of some important business before anything else—

Teaching a Love of Writing

I’ve shared several different versions over the years about how I teach my two-period ELL Newcomers class. Even though I’ve been teaching it for well over twenty years, I continu…

The poet set the course for her revolutionary career early, and charted it faithfully for decades by staying true to her vision and herself.

Nikki Giovanni, born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on 7 June 1943, was a critically acclaimed poet, educator and activist whose work was pivotal to the Black Arts movement and the Black Power movement