2021 - Porter Has Class

Student Response to Henry Slesar’s “Examination Day”

Post published:November 1, 2021
Post category:Student Work

Teachable Moments After reading "Flowers for Algernon," my students took a unit test comprised of text-dependent multiple-choice questions and a standardized writing task. Independently, while my students showed progress, many of them failed in including everything necessary for a complete student response. Therefore during the month of October, I decided to include some suspenseful stories and incorporate more writing. The first story of the month was Henry Slesar's "Examination Day." Overall, the students enjoyed the story even though they couldn't understand how something like that could really happen. Writing Task You have read “Examination Day” a short story about a…

Student Response to “Father’s Eyes” in 2021

Post published:October 17, 2021
Post category:Student Work

What Are We Up To? After introducing writing this year in a jigsaw style as you could see in my last blog post, it was time to put into practice some of those writing skills as a whole. For our second essay of the school year, my students read a short story called “Father’s Eyes” and were asked to respond to the conflicts of the story. Writing Task You have read “Father’s Eyes,” a short story about the relationship between a father and his son. Write an essay identifying the main conflict and how the author develops the conflict throughout…

Student Response to “The Right to the Streets of Memphis” in 2021

Post published:October 10, 2021
Post category:Student Work

Introduction The school year has been back in session for a full nine weeks term now which means I’ve been back to teaching writing. I always find it one of the most difficult things to teach but certainly the most rewarding as a Reading and Writing teacher. It has taken me a while to post this. Much longer than I would have wanted, but to say these nine weeks have been filled with in-school and out-of-school events would be an understatement. With this particular lesson, I taught it in a different style. I was introducing my students to our way…

Another Journey Begins: IVF Transfer #2

Post published:September 24, 2021
Post category:Blog

Where Have I Been? Long time, no see. I have meant to post something for so long and then always found an excuse not to put the effort into it. I had zero plans to be public about this, but as time went on, so many people have asked or received hints that something was going on that my wife and I have decided to be open about efforts to have our second child. The Secret Lives of Teachers...Again A few months ago, we began meeting with the same fertility specialists we used on our first IVF attempt. After a…