Reflecting & Storytelling About Teaching
We live in a time of twin pandemics – the coronavirus and racism. In the upcoming election, the two intersect and could at any time explode in our classrooms. In the fall of 2016, I tended to avoid national political discussion in favor of local issues, because the country felt so polarized… Continue reading
Teaching via Zoom at my kitchen counter, laptop perched on coffee table books, is not the top way I would choose to interact with my eighth-grade U.S. history students. However, by the time we reach the end of each period, I find myself reluctant to say goodbye… Continue reading
Writing a book about teaching is not as hard as it seems. You don’t need an agent, and cold submissions can be very successful. In 2007, I had been teaching for almost a decade, always fascinated by curriculum design… Continue reading
Now more than ever, Trader Joe’s comforts my soul. And recently, it has also shown me how to be a more empathetic leader, to remember the humanity around us. But first, some history. For the past dozen years — as I’ve taught middle school, steeped myself in faculty administration, and mothered two boys — Trader Joe’s has been there for me… Continue reading
It has been decades since I’ve wanted to live in the world of a fantasy novel as much as the one in Erin Morgenstern’s The Starless Sea. Entering the caverns of a vast secret underground library – one accessed through doors in our world both hidden and in plain sight – made me feel as if… Continue reading
For the past 18 years, I’ve taught at secular schools with their own rich sets of values. But Ariel Burger’s Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel’s Classroom brought back memories from my early teaching and, in the process, helped me with two teaching conundrums… Continue reading
It’s hard to imagine a time when publishers believed “teenagers didn’t like to read,” as Laurie Halse Anderson’s Shout remembers. Into this seemingly barren literary landscape in 1999 flared Anderson’s novel Speak, a now-classic work about a girl’s depression… Continue reading
“Step, kick, kick, leap, kick, touch… Again!” As I banged out the opening octaves from the first song of A Chorus Line, the baby grand’s sound filling our black box theater, I realized I should have practiced more. And I definitely should have prepared more for… Continue reading
On a recent summer evening the house was quiet, except for our neighbor’s construction workers sweeping gravel off the driveway. I had just dropped off my younger son at tennis lessons and my older son at cross-country practice… Continue reading
A teacher friend and I have what we like to call a “book club of two.” We meet throughout the year and especially in the summers, on patios on L.A.’s Ventura Boulevard over spinach salad and iced tea, shrimp tacos and sauvignon blanc. We have no specific criteria, but the books we love… Continue reading
Sarah Cooper 