Creative Genius Is On Loan

Today’s TED talk is one from 2009, from best-selling novelist Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love.  She talks about the elusive ghost that is creativity, and has some rather unorthodox ideas about it, ideas that I share to some extent. She states that creativity and suffering seem somehow linked, noting the many artists over the

NaNoWriMo Tip #17: Action In the Dialogue

Every year I teach Shakespeare, one student invariably asks the following question:  Why does Shakespeare not write stage directions in his plays?  The answer to this question is always the same: If you will examine his dialogue, you will find that he does. For example, in Hamlet Act 1.1 we have this exchange: BERNARDO: Who’s

How to Produce a School Yearbook Cheaply Through Createspace

I just finished my fourteenth year of teaching English at the high school level and look forward to a fifteenth.  I think back to when I started, and how I was roped in to teaching a yearbook class because I really needed the job and thought that if I took on some electives, it would

The Last Day of School: A Retrospective

I am a high school English teacher with four children attending elementary school.  Two of them are graduating to the middle school next year and the other two will climb the ladder to the fourth and second grades, respectively.  I am currently spending my time updating the inventory of books in my classroom, squaring away

Signs of China: “Paintball DOES Exist!”