My Life as an English Teacher
Jazz isn't dead. It just smells funny. --Frank Zappa I'm feeling kind of smelly right about now. For the first time since I started teaching public school, I'm not beginning the school year in a classroom. It smells funny. I liked being a teacher. I liked thinking of myself as a teacher. I still think …
NOTE: I began this post for Chukar Culture in April 2022, part way through my last quarter as a teacher at Neah Bay High School. I didn’t finish it for some reason. Now I want to include it on this blog, too. In the grass that has overgrowncauses and effects,someone must be stretched outblade of …
A deepening paradox. Writing is everywhere, but reading happens less each day. We can’t get away from the written word, but we don’t read. Google “decline in reading” and you’ll get 286 million results. The first result is the chilling study Reading At Risk, published by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2004, which documented …
Reed Thulander died in an auto accident (not his fault) in the early hours of New Year's Day. He was 19. I was Reed's English teacher for six years. When I first met him in 2013, the seventh-grader and I didn't get off to a good start. I was an overeducated, under-experienced slow learner trying …
It was a weird year, to say the least. I was honored to be chosen by the graduating class, back in December of 2019, well before most had heard of Covid, to be the commencement speaker. Well, it finally happened, in person, for real, in our little community. There were far fewer people than normal, …
This is the last day of instruction for our school, for this year anyway. Most of my classes took a final, and I had brief individual conferences with another class about each student's final project. I think we learn as we get older to control our emotions so they don't get the better of us. …
Now in the second month of quarantine, some new realizations. I’m sure many are discovering new things about themselves and others. I know I have. As a teacher, what was in store was the great unknown. Students had to be on the same page. I think for all of us, this was the most unknown …
The awards for the Idaho students competing in the Scholastic Art And Writing Awards were just announced. More than half of the dual-credit English students who submitted pieces for this competition received awards. This is a highly competitive national contest, which has grown substantially over the past 8 years I’ve had students submit work. This …
I recently took my dual-credit English 175 students on a field trip to Boise. We piled in our frigid little white bus at 8:00 a.m. (it was about 10 degrees that morning) and got home later that night about 11 p.m. Posing at the "B" It was a busy day. After the two-hour drive, we …
One of the key things my favorite teachers did a couple centuries ago when I was getting kicked out of their classes for farting or mouthing off was to show me they were real people. To me, that meant they laughed at funny things kids said, at least sometimes, or were unafraid to admit they …
Mr. McMichael 