Articles I’ve Written

Here are links to articles I’ve written:

• • • • • Building Cathedrals In The ESL Classroom
        • Computers & Community Organizing in the ESL Classroom
        • Computers, Relationships And English Language Learners
        • Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There
        • Family Literacy, Computers and ESL
        • Favorite Education Game Sites
        • Free Education Newsletters
        • Games Students Can Play
        • Home Computers & English Language Learning
        • Keeping Up-To-Date On Web Resources
        • More Free Email Newsletters
        • Pointing & Clicking For ESL: Using Video Games To Promote English Language Development
        • Samuel L. Jackson, My ESL Students And Me
        • Shaking Up The ESL Classroom
        • Teaching Is Organizing (Or Should Be)
        • The Positive Impact Of English Language Learners At An Urban School
        • What Do You Do In The Computer Lab?
        • A “Good” Class Gone “Bad”…And Back To “Good” Again
        • Online Learning Leverages Literacy To ELL Families
        • Teaching Secrets: The Last Day Of School (free registration required to read)
        • Parent Involvement Or Parent Engagement?
        • Teaching Secrets: How to Use Leftover Class Time Wisely (free registration required to read)
        • Teaching Secrets: Going Home (free registration required to read)
        • ELL 2.0: How To Make The Most Of The Web (free registration required to read)
        • “Family Literacy, English Language Learners, and Parent Engagement”
        • A Few Ways To Motivate Teachers To Use Tech
        • Giving Classrooms A Purpose
        • Getting English-Language Learners to Thrive
        • English Language Learners And The Power Of Personal Stories (The New York Times)
        • Home Visits And Hope For The Future
        • What Are Your New School-Year Resolutions?
        • The best kind of teacher evaluation (The Washington Post)
        • How To Give Classrooms A Mission (The Washington Post)
        • Why Paying Parents To Attend School Events Is Wrong (Washington Post)
        • Private Foundations Have a Place (& Have To Be Kept In Their Place)
        • Teacher Eyes On The Wrong Prize?
        • Let’s Do Less ‘Fire, Ready, Aim’
        • The importance of being unprincipled
        • Being ‘Transactional’ Versus Being ‘Transformational’ in Schools
        • School Librarians And English Language Learners
        • Looking Beyond The Simple School Fix (reprinted in Washington Post as Teachers: What we need to do to fix schools
        • What Do School Reform Technocrats and Failed Urban Renewal Schemes Have in Common?
        • The Parent Trigger Doesn’t Help Schools Or Parents
        • Gates Foundation Minimizing Great Tools For Helping Teachers Improve Their Craft
        • The Best (and Worst) Education News of 2010
        • Education-Related Predictions for 2011
        • Videotaping teachers the right way (not the Gates way)
        • Freire’s Learning Sequence
        • Using Visuals To Teach Text (podcast & transcript)
        • Super Book Of Web Tools For Educators (ESL chapter written by me)
        • Five Questions For Diane Ravitch
        • 4 Concerns About Michelle Rhee
        • What ‘Star Wars’ Can Teach Educators About Parent Engagement
        • 5 Questions for an Exceptional Principal
        • The Michigan Fish Test and school reform
        • Helping Students Motivate Themselves
        • Helping Students Motivate Themselves (Washington Post version)
        • Involvement or Engagement?
        • “Finishing the School Year Strong”
        • Shortcuts, School Reform and Private Foundations
        • Five Questions That Will Improve Your Teaching
        • What’s really wrong with ‘parent trigger’ laws
        • Why schools should not grade character traits
        • Icarus & School Reform
        • The Best (and Worst) Education News of 2011
        • Education-Related Predictions for 2012 (Huffington Post)
        • 10 education predictions for 2012 (Washington Post)
        • Helping Students Motivate Themselves (New York Times)
        • The Five By Five Approach To Differentiation Success
        • Cultivating Student Leadership
        • Students Remember More When They Tell Stories
        • Getting Organized Around Assets
        • Do’s & Don’ts For Teaching English Language Learners
        • Bribing Students: Another ‘Magical Solution” That Doesn’t Work
        • Seven Tips for Building Positive Relationships with English Language Learners
        • Assessment & Reflection With ELLs—And All Students
        • Fostering Relationships in the Classroom
        • Two Challenges in Teaching ELLs: Primary Language Use and Book Selection
        • Merit Pay and “Loss Aversion” (Washington Post)
        • Dancing Guy Doesn’t Teach Good Leadership Lessons
        • What to do — and not do — for growing number of English Language Learners
        • Using Games in the ELL Classroom, Part I
        • Using Games in the ELL Classroom, Part II
        • Eight Things Skilled Teachers Think, Say, and Do
        • Using Photos With English Language Learners
        • Eight Ways to Use Video With English Language Learners
        • The best — and worst — education news of 2012
        • Why School Reform And Other Debates Get Nasty
        • Teacher: How my 9th graders graded me
        • Cultivating a Positive Environment for Students
        • Technology: Moving from No to Yes (Part One)
        • Giving Teachers the Opportunity to Say “Yes” to Ed Tech (Part Two)
        • Chart: Useful Summary Of The Differences Between Parent Involvement & Parent Engagement
        • Ethical and Effective Test Prep
        • Five ways to get kids to want to read and write
        • Positive, Not Punitive, Classroom Management Tips
        • More Positive, Not Punitive, Classroom Management Tips
        • Using Tech to Teach English
        • Why we can’t all get along over school reform
        • Best and Worst Education News of 2013 — So Far
        • Getting students to engage — not just comply
        • Video: “Developing Leadership in Classrooms, Schools and Communities”
        • Developing Teacher Leadership for the Long Haul
        • Five key strategies to get/keep kids engaged at school
        • Teachers Should Be Friendly with Students but Not Friends
        • Best and worst education news of 2013
        • What school reformers can learn from Pope Francis
        • Nine educated education predictions for 2014!
        • The Education Department’s strange new report on teaching (reprints most, though not all, of a post I wrote for this blog)
        • English-Language Learners and Academic Language
        • The manipulation of Social Emotional Learning
        • Teaching Argument Writing to ELLs
        • The best and worst education news of 2014 — so far
        • Best and worst education news of 2014 — a teacher’s list
        • Nine education predictions for 2015
        • Help Your Students Get Into the Learning Flow
        • What Motivates A Student’s Interest in Reading and Writing
        • Creating the Conditions for Student Motivation
        • Strategies for Helping Students Motivate Themselves
        • The real stuff of schooling: How to teach students to apply knowledge
        • Why Viewing Classroom Management as a Mystery Can Be a Good Thing
        • Apps, Apps Everywhere: Are Any Good, You Think?
        • Teachers: What we want everyone to know about working in our high-needs school
        • 5-Minute Film Festival: 8 Videos for ELL Classrooms
        • Best and worst education news of 2015 — a teacher’s list
        • Eight education predictions (and some wishful thinking) for 2016 — a teacher’s list
        • Common Core Writing and ELLs
        • Collaborative Writing, Common Core, and ELLs
        • Peer Review, Common Core, and ELLs
        • How to Cultivate Student Agency in English Language Learners
        • Ideas for “Close Reading” with ELL Students
        • Helping English-Learners Meet the Common-Core’s Speaking and Listening Standards
        • Chat Stations, Predictions, and ‘Wingmen’: More Speaking and Listening Activities for ELLs
        • Teacher: What happened when my students’ behavior took a ‘major turn for the worse’
        • Strategies for teaching the Common Core — no matter what you think about the standards
        • The best and worst education news in 2016 — so far.
        • ‘Dear President-elect Trump’: Immigrant students write letters asking for ‘the opportunity to demonstrate we are good people.’
        • The good — and very, very bad — education news of 2016
        • A teacher makes eight education predictions for 2017 — some of them dire
        • Student Engagement: Key to Personalized Learning
        • The best — and worst — education news of 2017
        • Nine education predictions for 2018 — some of them heartbreaking
        • Micro-Writing for English Learners
        • Activating Prior Knowledge With English Language Learners
        • Helping English-Learners End the School Year Strong
        • How to Use Oral Presentations to Help English Language Learners Succeed
        • How to Engage ELLs in Literary Conversations
        • Culturally Responsive Teaching in the ELL Classroom
        • 4 Fun Ways to Practice Short Oral Presentations
        • Teaching English Language Learners: Tips From The Classroom
        • How Recovering From A Herniated Disc Increased My Empathy For Students
        • The best — and worst — education news of 2018
        • A teacher makes 2019 education predictions — some he ‘desperately’ hopes won’t come true
        • The best and worst education news of 2019 — and one item hard to categorize
        • Research in Action: Ramping Up Support for Long-Term ELLs
        • A teacher makes 10 predictions for education in 2020 — some of them rather hopeful
        • A teacher assesses the past decade in K-12 education — and makes 9 predictions for the 2020s
        • A teacher predicts what his classroom (and others) will look like in the fall
        • We Might Have Gotten Remote Learning Wrong. We Can Still Fix This School Year
        • Teacher: Eight concerns about school this fall that are robbing me of sleep
        • The positively worst and best education news of 2020 — as viewed by a teacher
        • A teacher’s deepest fears about 2021: Students who disappeared, covid-19 myopia and six more
        • Teacher: What’s missing from calls for summer school to stem ‘learning loss’
        • Thirteen things that should happen in schools now — but most probably won’t
        • The kind of teaching kids need right now
        • The pandemic is affecting the third straight school year — and this teacher is very, very worried
        • Teacher: 10 things school districts should do right now
        • There was a lot of education news in 2021. Here’s the best and worst of it — by a veteran teacher
        • 9 mostly pessimistic education predictions for 2022 — from a teacher
        • Help Language Learners Lead Their Own Learning
        • Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Teaching
        • What Teachers Have Learned Since the Pandemic Closed Schools
        • How to Promote the Intrinsic Desire to Learn
        •  What Kinds of Feedback Motivate Students Best?
        • 3 Ways to Make Learning Relevant to Students