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The Ides of March, 2021
Patricia Thrushart “Soothsayer: Beware the ides of March. Caesar: What man is that? Brutus: A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.” — William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, c. 1599…
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Write Like You Talk
Stacey Gross Sedaris as Example David Sedaris is the most brilliant man alive. Thank god that man picked up a pen and never put it down. David Sedaris can write…
An English Teacher’s Guide for What Makes Writing “Good” and What To Do If It Isn’t
That’s why, several years into my teaching career, I laid down the Red Pen, thanks to some good advice from a colleague, and changed the way I looked at writing instruction entirely. I had to stop working for my students as their copy-editor. Neither of us wanted me to do that job in the first place. In other words, instead of tearing the writing apart, I had to focus on developing what was already there. If I was going to evaluate someone’s writing, it was just as important for me to identify strengths as it was to identify weaknesses. Maybe even more so.
Two More Things
We have all survived our English classes -- elementary, middle, high school. . . some of us college. Many taught by the best intentioned people, teachers we ever had. Because they knew if we could not communicate, could not write clearly we’d encounter problems from our relationships to our employment. And yet there were two things not taught. These things I learned years after my comp classes but from my comp prof, Art Seamans, who wrestled with and continues to wrestle with the Poseidon nature of language. He ultimately forced the two blessings which follow.