The Polliwog Journal

In a conversation yesterday with my colleague and friend, Lee McGlade, we were talking about balancing life and work. He told me about waiting for a parade to begin this fall and noticing the guy next to him was sitting there grading papers.
What he would have told the guy if it would have made any [...]

[Read more]

I felt confined by a rubric this morning, more than ever. When I read the book Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment by my friend Maja Wilson, I agreed with her premise but had not felt, in practice, the same angst she had felt when she conceived the book in the first place. I get it [...]

[Read more]

 Thanks to Bud Hunt, from whose site I “stole” this link.

addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fdhogue.edublogs.org%2F2007%2F10%2F15%2Fa-vision-of-students-today-worth-really-thinking-about%2F’;
addthis_title = ‘A+vision+of+students+today+worth+really+thinking+about’;
addthis_pub = ”;

[Read more]

I missed David Warlick’s post called Technology & Teachers, a Rant but it compares in some ways with what I wrote for the Paying Attention? video.
The lament lives.

addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fdhogue.edublogs.org%2F2007%2F09%2F06%2Fmissing-an-intersection-in-time-and-space%2F’;
addthis_title = ‘Missing+an+intersection+in+time+and+space’;
addthis_pub = ”;

[Read more]

Video: “Did You Know?” by Karl Fisch
I don’t have much to say about this video that I didn’t say for the one below. This one is better. Seems more globally focused versus the other which is more teacher oriented. But both messages are critically important.
As I am about to step into my classroom for [...]

[Read more]

Download Video: Posted by jsdt4 at TeacherTube.com.
Okay, if you watched this video, which is a lot of facts/stats set to music, you might be thinking “yeah, exactly” or perhaps you are simply confused by the message.
I want to put myself into the consciousness of a typical traditional teacher for a moment. I [...]

[Read more]

I got an email today from our technology specialist, a guy who is quite the Renaissance man. He is a former instrumental music teacher turned techie who builds boats and writes poetry in his “spare time,” a concept I imagine he feels some nostalgia for. He sent me a link to a beautiful poem called [...]

[Read more]

I wrote on the board, “Poems can’t talk. Do not write, ‘This poem talks about. . .’. Instead write, ‘This poem is about . . .’.” It is a matter of precision in language. So is using “who” for people instead of “that”–people who, not people that. Precision is important.
Recently, after one of my students [...]

[Read more]

This week brought me two bright, little moments–both made me feel glad to be an English teacher. The first was when one of my AP students told me how much she was enjoying our current book, All Quiet on the Western Front. I needed a different book this year (it does get tedious reading the [...]

[Read more]

As I write this, I am listening to a new CD that I downloaded from iTunes–Lucinda Williams’ Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. I also got her new one, West, but I’m listening to Car Wheels right now. I listen to music on my way to and from school usually, sometimes NPR, but usually music. [...]

[Read more]