[I wrote the following essay, as pictured in the photo above, during a power outage in August. We’ve been told Fall 2020 will be a particularly bad storm season. Of course it will.] I’m writing by hand, something I rarely do outside of the letters I write to my older daughter, who’s twenty-one, and pen…
Author: caritagardiner
89. Why Leave off the Grades
Doing everything online and using backward design to organize my classes has lead to many noticeable improvements in the structure of my classes. One aspect of the class about which I didn’t like the way a digital life seemed to be pushing my pedagogy was in the grading. For the last dozen or more years,…
88. Why Control What I Can
I’m still a paper calendar user. I know, not very 2020 of me, but facts are facts (and why would anyone want to be 2020?). For as long as I can remember, I’ve used a calendar that provides a two-inch by five-inch rectangle for each day’s events. This year, I decided to live on the…
87. Why NoSpendtember
If you’re reading this the first day it goes live, it’s already the second of September, but it’s not too late to join me in my annual NoSpendtember tradition. NoSpendtember started as a result of our yearly spending habits. As you know (since all of my readers know me), I’m a teacher at a boarding…
86. Why Sports Aphorisms Work
I took the photo above as a screen capture from a Google search for images of Jess Sims. She teaches strength (and probably lots of other) classes for Peloton, which has amazing online workouts. (You don’t need to buy the bike or the treadmill to get a monthly membership, which offers hundreds of great classes…
85. Why Looks Matter
The photo above is a screenshot from a joke video I made with my younger daughter. We both dressed and made ourselves up in an “old-lady look.” (If you read my post from last week, on my birthday, you’ll see that I’m actually delighted with my age. This post isn’t about that.) I know this…
84. Why I’m Happy at 51!
[Photo credit to Emma Brodie. Please remember that name so that you can buy her book when it comes out next summer.] This post will go live on my fifty-first birthday, making me three times as old as the older students I teach. (Eleventh graders are often seventeen.) Fifty-one used to sound old to me,…
83. Why Keep Your Options Open When It Comes to Book Publishing (Guest Post)
[Hi, Carita here. In the place of one of my traditional MFA classes, last summer I got to be an intern for a literary agent. No, I wasn’t getting anyone coffee or picking up dry cleaning. I was working on social media and online campaigns and learning about book submissions. My behind-the-scenes view into the…
82. Why We Won’t Remember 2020 as the Worst Year Ever (I hope)
“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” Maya Angelou, whose photo above I took from her FaceBook page), said this line, and I hope it’s going to become 2020’s mantra. I don’t want anybody to think that I’m loving on 2020. In the world, this year…
81. Why I’m Thinking about “Like”
I have a complicated history with the word like. As an English teacher, I’ve tried to help many students learn to avoid using it as a filler. I’ve had “like police” and “like jars” and “like competitions,” some of which have helped people notice when they say it, but none of which probably had any…