by Ersun Warncke | 5 月 7, 2024 | Uncategorized
How to win the warOne of my students is putting persuasive writing to real-world use — they’re trying to get their parents to let them use SnapChat.This emerged as an issue a few weeks ago, in a discussion of informative writing. Their pitch on that occasion bore no...
by Ersun Warncke | 4 月 29, 2024 | Uncategorized
A salute to Penn prof Paul HendricksonBack around the time Y2K and the Millennium bug were matters of concern (and when we could unironically Party Like It Was 1999) Washington Post journalist and author Paul Hendrickson stepped into a teaching post at University of...
by Ersun Warncke | 4 月 23, 2024 | Uncategorized
Why animal welfare education matters for kidsIn November 2022, I read about New Zealand children being taught to trap and kill rats. The story has nagged me ever since.The child killers were ostensibly working towards the laudable goal of protecting native fauna.What...
by Ersun Warncke | 4 月 16, 2024 | Uncategorized
The inevitable doesn’t have to beIn a fleeting discussion, a fellow animal-lover said it was a shame that domestic animals are routinely sterilized. ‘It’s not natural,’ he said.My first reaction was, okay, how about you take on the care of the countless haggard...
by Ersun Warncke | 4 月 9, 2024 | Uncategorized
Why teachers should embrace errors — especially their own!“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.“Samuel Beckett’s words (from the novella Worstward Ho) are an arch rallying cry for MFA types.They have never set well with me....
by Ersun Warncke | 4 月 2, 2024 | Uncategorized
Write better without touching a keyboard!I’ve started to play around with video and wanted to share the first two installments of Write to Success’s Hands-free Writing Hacks series.Most of what makes for good writing happens away from a desk. Immersing oneself in the...
by Ersun Warncke | 3 月 26, 2024 | Uncategorized
Unpacking a potential classroom saboteur Over the past few years I’ve read a lot neurodiversity, learning differences, etc., which introduced me to pathological demand avoidance (the less fun PDA).Descriptions of associated traits rang a bell. I’ve certainly had...
by Ersun Warncke | 3 月 19, 2024 | Uncategorized
Writing in an uncertain worldLast week, one of the students I worked with as an essay application coach was admitted to their first-choice school, Choate Rosemary Hall. Choate is highly selective even among highly selective secondary schools, taking between 11-16% of...
by Ersun Warncke | 3 月 12, 2024 | Uncategorized
Read your way to better writingOne thing I cannot emphasize enough, as a writing teacher, is the importance of reading, reading, reading. Reading increases knowledge, builds emotional intelligence, creates connections, percolates language in the brain. Anyone who...
by Ersun Warncke | 3 月 5, 2024 | Uncategorized
Tips from author Katherine CottleWelcome to another dispatch from ‘Between the Lines’ – interviews with teachers, writers and writing teachers on specific aspects of their craft.In this week’s interview, author and Goucher College writing professor Katherine Cottle...
