My mother is retiring from 36 years of teaching, and to honor her, my sister, my brother, and I threw her a surprise party while I was down visiting during my PCA/ACA conference. My sister and my mom’s good friend Debbie, also a teacher, also organized a scrapbook for people to leave memories of myContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: an essay about Mom”
Category Archives: teaching
PCA/ACA update, days 1 and 2
These have been some packed days. And for some reason, everyone is sending me to comics panels (no pun intended)! Not that there’s anything wrong with that — I love comics. But it’s starting to feel weird because today I attended a library panel (on defining the role of librarians through popular representations) and woundContinue reading “PCA/ACA update, days 1 and 2”
PCA/ACA: It begins
Today, the 2011 conference of the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association begins. In just a few hours, I’ll be attending my first panel, and as the conference carries on over the next few days, I’ll be posting updates of the panels I’ve attended and the things I’m learning. To which end: the poll results (howeverContinue reading “PCA/ACA: It begins”
Last chance: make me work!
Next week, my popular culture conference begins, which means this is your last chance to overwork a teacher: go to my PCA/ACA schedule under the Teaching tab and use the polls to assign me homework! Next week: reporting from the conference! 🙂
A Writer’s Notebook: Mapping a story
This past Tuesday, I visited Zayed University to speak to an education class studying youth literature and preparing to write young adult stories of their own. (I’ll write a fuller post on this experience later this weekend.) We talked about books they were reading and how they might begin to write their own stories. TheContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Mapping a story”
Teaching, teaching, and more teaching
I have so much to say on these topics that I’m actually bursting (ew?), which is why I’m not going to write more about them just yet — too many things to say, not yet enough distance or coherence with which to say them all. But I’ve had teaching on a brain a lot latelyContinue reading “Teaching, teaching, and more teaching”
Ask an author: Lori Ann Bloomfield
My friend Lori Ann Bloomfield, of The Last River Child fame and author of that Elvis story I liked to a while back, is opening up the floodgates to reader questions over at her First Line blog. Got a burning question about writing, reading, or publishing? Go visit her blog and drop her a lineContinue reading “Ask an author: Lori Ann Bloomfield”
Doctor, doctor: a coda
If there was a weak spot in my number-crunching comparison of MDs and PhDs from last week, it was in the accounting of how many hours a typical academic PhD works in a week. I’m confident of the numbers I offered — an average of 60 hours a week — but those numbers were basedContinue reading “Doctor, doctor: a coda”
大変だから日本のために思いやって下さい。Please care for Japan in this difficult time. (via Jenn in Japan)
More (and better) links and resources for helping Japan, plus a touching video from one of Jenn in Japan‘s own students. (You might cry watching it, but it’s a heartwarming clip, which is a nice change of pace — I needed to reason to smile today.) Please visit this post and click on the linksContinue reading “大変だから日本のために思いやって下さい。Please care for Japan in this difficult time. (via Jenn in Japan)”
Doctor, doctor, give me the news
There are a number of popular comparisons going around right now. On a recent episode of The Daily Show, John Stewart compares “fat cat teachers” to bankers and Wall Street investors and points out the gross disparity between million-dollar executive bonuses resulting from billion-dollar federal bailouts and the $50,000+ salaries of teachers in a climateContinue reading “Doctor, doctor, give me the news”
Samuel Snoek-Brown 