I was assigned to read a great blog called See Mary Teach. Mary is an English teacher and has been blogging since 2009. Her blog is very extensive and contains a multitude of posts ranging on all ends of the spectrum of subjects.
The first post I commented on was a brief synopsis of a multigenre project she did with her high schoolers. I was interested in the way she instituted "to-do" lists to help get some of her students organized. She also used a kind of depressing and sorrowful literary passage to evoke an emotional response and discussion from her students. I really liked that technique and appreciated its boldness. I think it is important to push students outside of their normal comfort zones to illicit profound and new thoughts from them.
The second post was a very short post in which she links a New York Times article which discusses the decline of the English major. Her post a simple short comment on the article and a link to it. The article had a section calling on educators to do a better job in explaining the purpose of the humanities to students. This resonated with me and I commented on that to Mary. We, as educators, need to be able to sell our knowledge as something beneficial to prospective students. We can't just hope they sign up to, or are mandated to attend, our classes.
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