Category: Blog

  • The Write Stuff Video Series: An Introduction to 4-Level Analysis

    Why 4-Level Analysis? I use 4-level analysis in my classroom for two reasons:

  • The Write Stuff Video Series: Identifying Independent Clauses

    As a follow-up to my last video Fixing run-on and comma-splice errors, here is some more instruction on identifying when you have a simple sentence with one subject-predicate set, a compound sentence with two subject-predicate sets, and a simple sentence with a compound subject and a compound predicate.

  • The Write Stuff Video Series: Fixing Run-On and Comma-Splice Errors

    I have been teaching high-school English for ten years. I guess I’m slightly old-school because I believe that teaching students grammar will help them improve their writing. For those of you who are confused by this statement, there are many English teachers who don’t believe this is true; therefore, many students are graduating from high…

  • Blessing #20: Blossoming as a Writer

    Fight for your right to write. That’s the slogan my students chose for our journalism class last year. It was so appropriate for a student-run newspaper that has to battle against censorship. We had a passionate staff that year, wanting to change the world with their school paper. Little did I know back in August…

  • Blessing #19: My Faith

    I’m not going to lie; my faith is not what it was ten years ago. And I’m glad. My understanding of and relationship with God has taken many different forms over the course of my life.

  • To Be or Not To Be…A Teacher: The Architecture of the Classroom

    In my last Education Reformation post about Teachers’ Roles, I defined teachers as guides or facilitators to students’ acquisition of knowledge. Truly, what else can we be? Teachers don’t have all the knowledge anymore. Back before the internet age, teachers were expected to be the experts of their content. In conjunction with the textbooks, teachers dispersed…

  • Evil Knievil Wanna-Be

    My older brother was the greatest kid ever born in my family; my younger brother was the cutest kid ever born in my family; and I was the girl. I believed that if I were born a boy, I would’ve received more attention, so I tried my hardest to be a boy. I never played…

  • Evel Knievel Wannabe

    My older brother was the greatest kid ever born in my family; my younger brother was the cutest kid ever born in my family; and I was the girl. I believed that if I were born a boy, I would’ve received more attention, so I tried my hardest to be a boy. I never played…

  • Merry Christmas!

    Dear Readers, I pray for joy and peace in each of your lives this Christmas; for those two things are yours to keep forever and can never be taken from you, no matter the heart ache, the circumstance, or the disappointment.

  • To Be, or not To Be…a Teacher: Teachers’ Roles

    I truly hate the present trend of teacher bashing: The belief that all the problems in our country are because teachers have failed us. I hope my past posts on education show that teachers are teaching in a broken system; the system needs to be fixed so that teachers can provide their students what they…