Teaching ELA in the 21st

This semester, I am fortunate to venture back into the world of working with writing coaches, exploring how providing feedback to student writing can shape them as writers and deepen their sense of how their writing communicates their ideas. I am even more fortunate to bring my students along, which one of my students phrased as being "guinea pigs for the writing coaches to learn about being teachers." While my sense about giving feedback to student writing has changed immensely from the first time I was a writing coach since I now offer regular feedback to students from the teacher role, as I step back into the role of writing coach I'd like to reflect on my literacy journey that has brought me to where I am today. I read all of those books! When I think of all the experiences that have shaped my enjoyment and understanding of literacy, I am transported back to my love of reading as a middle and high schooler. Nearly all of my highest achieving students are reading other...

    Let's face it: digital literacy has become ubiquitous to everyday life, whether it's creating a post for social media, writing an email to a colleague about a current project, or submitting paperwork digitally to a new doctor's office. In many ways, digital composition and the way we connect with those around us online has become so ingrained into everyday life, we can sometimes forget the ways in which we use it. I struggled for days on how to begin this blog post, stumped on any experience of digital composition outside of my monthly posts to social media--all the while composing emails to coworkers and the parents of my students, creating quizzes on Google Forms, and creating interactive vocabulary practice sets on websites like GimKit and KnoWord (try them on your own, if you dare). In fact, I did not realize how much digital literacy had permeated my daily life until my father called me on my lunch break as I attempted to write this post. My digitally illiterate ...