A huge thanks to Dean Shareski for the del.icio.us bookmark to Alfie Kohn’s September 2006 article for the Phi Delta Kappan about research and homework. I’m an easy teacher; I’m sure that’s what the kids at school say. Mrs. Tabor doesn’t give tests or lots of homework. I do expect students to read about 125…
Author: Kate Tabor
English teacher in a JK-12 school
Reading, today
Today was all about books. Breaking Dawn was released last night at midnight and we bought a copy this morning before noon. Borders had one after our first stop at Barnes & Noble. Emily read as we drove to the Oak Park Library book sale. We were on a mission to help build my niece’s…
Fair Use
Yesterday afternoon I took part in a conversation about what fair use and copyright looks like in the K-12 classroom. I was invited when the head of our upper-school was unable to attend, and because I am the adviser to the yearbook and the newspaper and I teach Journalism and Media Studies, I was asked…
Senioritis
It’s a Friday, and I have the pleasure of teaching two of my classes of seniors: one at 8:10 in the morning,, and one at 1:00 in the afternoon. Both classes are sleepy; the ‘just rolled out of bed’ crowd and the ‘post lunch drowsies’ patrol. The morning class was my journalism class and we…
The Bluest Eye or Beloved?
My class is reading Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye (TBE) and two of my colleagues are reading/have read with their classes Beloved. My students, as heterogeneous a bunch as you are going to find here, are enjoying the TBE and we are looking at the book through (as she suggests in the afterward) Morrison’s…
First Post
Today one of my poetry presenters did not show up, so we had some unplanned time. The amazing synchronicity of the following events led to a collaborative poem. Yesterday, one of my students brought us Jim Carroll, and his 8 Fragments for Kurt Cobain, and Carroll was in the company of Robert Frost and recent…
Living on the Lip of Insanity 