Where are All the High School Teachers?

The title says it all. For as long as I have been involved in secondary education (ok, so not that long), it has been apparent that most everything “teacher-related” is centered around those oh-so-adorable elementary school students. Sitting in undergrad classes, there were often audible sighs or groans of protest among my peers whenever a well-meaning professor would share ideas intended to “motivate reluctant readers” or “help design and execute authentic assessments.” Inevitably, their ideas, while good, were always best suited for kindergarten classrooms rather than those of our good-hearted but often misguided and sullen teenagers. And it didn’t stop there on my college campus…have you been in any teacher supply stores lately?! Don't even get me started on the "educational resources" sections of bookstores. I almost snuck some covert pics on my phone while browsing at Barnes & Noble this afternoon. The bookshelves had labels such as, "For parents and teachers of elementary students" and "For parents and teachers of middle school" but not a single thing geared solely for high schoolers. The English and Language Arts section only went up as high as 8th grade. 

So here's what I'm thinking. For the sake of my 101 teenage children (as of the current 2011-2012 school year), I want this humble little blog of mine to be a place to share what's working and what's not in my classroom. True, a lot of it may be specific to my content--ENGL I and II--but there is such a wealth of information, resources, tools, and let's not forget stories to be shared. And while we can often glean some useful gems from the overabundance of elementary school material that's floating around out there, there's something empowering about asserting ourselves as a separate entity. What we do in the high school classroom and how we do it is a completely different brand of crazy. So let's run with it and do our own thing rather than trying to fix, fit, and tweak everything else to suit our own very specific needs. Ready.....go!