HC English Department

"Two years ago, English Language Arts teacher Tyler Rablin promoted cell phone use in the classroom, encouraging his students to bring their phones to class. He's had a change of heart. Next year, he'll be asking students to check their phones at the door. Rablin recently took to Twitter to share his rationale in an 8-tweet thread. We asked him to share more thoughts."

"On May 7, beginning at 10 a.m. the Raritan Township Local Historians Committee will welcome Hunterdon Central Regional High School sophomore James Holot to present his unique discoveries of local history in greater Flemington and his home township."

"In this five-step project, you'll learn the art of making explainer videos from beginning to end. Listen to industry experts share their tips and tricks on how to select a topic, research information, and choose the right tools to produce content and share your video with the world. "

"Are you ever SO excited to tell your friends a story that you kind of jumble the whole thing up? Like the substance is there, but if the delivery is off it just doesn't LAND as well. The same thing goes for podcasting. Even if we can hear in your voice that you're excited about something, if there's no structure or narrative to the piece it can be hard to hook an audience. This week on The Students' Podcast, we're revisiting an episode from last season where we talk to some of our high school finalists who managed to tell their story really well."

"All over the country, local school board members, who are typically volunteers or serve for small stipends, have indeed been placed on the front line of a national culture war. Protestors are mobilizing against masks, vaccines, LGBTQ rights, removing police from schools, and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. In early October, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland directed the FBI to meet with state and local authorities to create "strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff." BACK TO SCHOOL: LIVE UPDATES She Joined The School Board To Serve Her Community. Now She's In The Crossfire NPR spoke to school board members in California, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, in addition to Watkins and a fellow board member in Georgia. All of them told similar stories: of being yelled at in meetings that are sometimes brought to a halt entirely; receiving threatening letters; being followed to their cars; and being photographed or filmed."

"Meridian Stories believes that Digital Literacy needs to be regularly practiced in schools. In support of that, we produce an annual Digital Storytelling Competition in which there are fifteen different Challenges from which to choose: five each in Language Arts, STEAM and History. Each Challenge - 3 to 4 week projects - demands that students (grades 5th - 12th) research deeply, think creatively and problem-solve iteratively, in order to produce short digital stories about curricular content."

"Simple, quick exercises improve mindfulness, self-regulation, and well-being, for both students and teachers."

"Encouraging students to set goals for themselves-the first phase of self-regulated learning-helps them develop a growth mindset."

"Building a classroom culture of feedback requires scaffolding and a safe, nurturing environment, but it's worth the effort, teachers say."

"Teachers can rethink their grading practices to make them more mathematically fair for students and allow for redemption for a missed assignment."

"Work by teenagers and adults, in a variety of mediums and genres, that can inspire your own account of this extraordinary year."

"Surveys that include a mix of fun questions and more serious ones about things like identity can bring middle and high school teachers and students closer."

"An assignment that focuses on learning gains rather than losses can get the new year off to a good start."

"How one teacher quit "hanging a grade-based incentive over my students' heads" and offered different, more inclusive ways for students to participate. "

"Over the past year, we witnessed police violence, increasingly partisan politics and the continued American legacy of racism during a generation-defining pandemic. And for many, this was observed, at times, in isolation at home. I have worried about how we can heal from our collective trauma. As a teacher of Greek literature, I am inclined to turn to the past to understand the present. I found solace in the Homeric epic "The Iliad" and its complex views about violence after the 9/11 attacks. And I found comfort in the Odyssey after my father's unexpected death at 61, in 2011. Similarly, Homer can help guide us as we return back to our normal worlds after a year of minimizing social contact. He can also, I believe, offer guidance on how people can heal."

"During my years as an English teacher, camouflage had been easy to come by. I concentrated on 19th-century writers Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman and a bit of Edgar Allan Poe. I kept their poetry safely packaged in a crate padded with literary scholarship. But paging through a copy of the New Yorker and seeing a poem by, say, Terrance Hayes left me feeling like a dog trying to use his owner's iPhone. With "The Life of a Poet," this new quarterly series sponsored by the Library of Congress, I'd committed to what felt like an act of guaranteed humiliation: interviewing the most accomplished poets in the country without having the foggiest idea what their poetry meant. In the early years, I can't claim to have attained a great deal of insight, but a funny thing happened in the crucible of my quarterly terror: I stopped reading poetry like a panicked codebreaker. That is, I stopped demanding that every poem yield its concealed meaning, which I suppose is the legacy of outmoded high school English classes. Instead I just read - often aloud - letting the words flow over me and affect me however they could."

"Below, a piece we first published in 2017 but have updated annually since. It now has over 20 ideas for helping even the most verse averse find something to enjoy."

"Adam Bernard Sanders, a high school student and winner of our 2019 Personal Narrative Contest, tells us why he likes to keep his conclusions "purposefully open-ended.""

"Varya Kluev, a NJ high school student and winner of our 2019 Personal Narrative Contest, tells us why metaphor is her "go-to tool" whenever she wants to add flair to her writing."

"Entries for the Student Podcast Challenge for middle and high school students will open on Jan. 1, and close on March 15. We'll have lots of updates, training materials, and make sure to sign up for our newsletter with more tips and advice, here!"