I have really had an exceptional summer of professional development. If there is a theme in the disparate experiences of this last month it is my attempt to understand HOW we learn things and how I can be a better teacher. Beginning at Constructing Modern Knowledge, I have been working on things that are not…
Author: Kate Tabor
English teacher in a JK-12 school
Very Old Yet Not Embalmed
I’ve just spent a week in Oxford at a teacher seminar studying Shakespeare. I’m sure that there will be thoughtful and extensive posts about my time here and the people that I spent time with, but as the bus to Heathrow has both WiFi and power, and honestly a highway looks like a highway no…
Fear – post 100
Well, it has taken me a while to get to my 100th post. And I am fortunate that I don’t have to wring my hands about what to write about because I recently I had a teaching epiphany while I was being a student. I have written about my yoga class before. Our teacher helps…
Days 1 and 2 – CMK
Geek spiral. I am at the most intimate conference on education that I have ever attended. I sometimes feel like I hear about a conference just after the conference has reached its point of bloated and oversubscribed. We sit for hours in ballrooms watching yet another PowerPoint presentation or the feverish exhortations of the keynote…
Didn’t I?
I’ve been in the house by myself more often in the last two weeks, and this allows me to approach the CD player without fear of being Melodyned to death and to listen to music that I want to listen to without offending my spouse’s sensitive ears and sensibilities. It most importantly allows me to…
Summer’s here
Officially. I love solar milestones on the wheel of the year. My daughters were born on them. One on Yule, 16 years ago. Twins on Imbolc, thirteen years ago. So we come to midsummer – Bergman’s film and Sonheim’s adaptation remind us that there are three “Smiles of a Summer Night” The first smile smiles…
I can haz this to write?
I have discovered that I like to sit at the end of this enormous dining room table with the sun streaming in behind me (but not shining on the screen of my computer because then I couldn’t see) to write. I am sitting on two giant, soft bench cushions with a cherry red, linen pillow…
Never-Dull
“Oh my god, what is that smell?” That was what my daughter said when she came into the kitchen. I had just put away the Never-Dull. My favorite Japanese garden shears had rust spots, so I had spent a bit of time rubbing the spots out. And the smell of the Never-Dull brought back memories….
Who’s Watching the Watchmen?
One of my editors of the much beleaguered school paper wrote an article for the final issue of the year about censorship and due process as it is set up in the constitution of the school’s student government. He titled the piece Who’s Watching the Watchmen because he sees the essential problem that they encountered…
By Our Own Hands
The school that I teach at used to have each of the new teachers tell something about themselves to the school early in that first year. I wrote about it here. But I recently, in a computer archeology moment, found the story that I told that day, so I thought I would share it here:…
What’s the Use of Stories…
“What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true?” That’s the terrible question asked by Haroun of his father, Rashid Kalifah the storyteller in the novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. This terrible question and a blog post by a writer of novels for young adults made me think about why…
A Day of Introspection
It’s raining. I like the rain as it melts the icy, brown snow piles. But it does make things more – dangerous? Slippery? – (and then there is the imminent danger of melting dog poo). I am reading student stories. I wonder of I forgot to teach some things. I am reflecting on philosophical differences…
Living on the Lip of Insanity 