Book #129 of the year was Code Name Verity , by Elizabeth Wein.  This is riveting World War II spy fiction with twists you won't see co...

Endings I talk to my eighth grade students about endings.  I teach them about Deus ex machina .  In ancient drama, a god would often be ...

This morning I was working on lesson plans on this day off to celebrate the Battle of Vertières, the definitive battle in which the Haitians...

"I think all times are turbulent—it’s just that they’re turbulent in different ways, and for different people. Poets are always swirlin...

We had conferences today, and somehow I just never got my act together enough to do a Poetry Friday post.  But fortunately many other people...

Book #126 of this year was Wish , by Barbara O'Connor.  My mother sent me a copy of this book, autographed for me by O'Connor.  Get...

Recently I read the term "magnet topics" for the first time.  (It may have been in a Poetry Friday post.)  Magnet topics are the s...

Today in seventh grade we read a poem from the Poetry Friday Anthology for Middle School about what you can see out the window.  The poem, ...

Book #118 of 2016 was Steele Secrets: A Young Adult Ghost Story , by Andi Cumbo-Floyd.  This book tackles the issue of slavery, and in a wa...

We in Haiti are brokenhearted right now.  When you love, whether it's a person or a place, there's always the risk of a broken heart...

Lately, my days are lived in a state of double consciousness.  There's the reality of my surroundings, my job, my ordinary life.  And th...

We had two unexpected days off this week as Hurricane Matthew barrelled through Haiti.  Port-au-Prince was not badly hit, but the southern p...

I searched "hurricane" on my blog, and found that I've written here over the years about Irene, Hanna, Tomas, Sandy, Isaac - a...

Today it's two weeks since I had surgery, and I am mostly back to normal.  Not everything was normal when I had the surgery (which is wh...

I have mostly recovered from the surgery I had a couple of weeks ago, but this week I developed a cold and lost my voice.  It's challeng...

This poem seems appropriate for the rotten week I've had.  People try to help, and do help, but there are some things you just have to c...

Book #110 of 2016 was The Secret History , by Donna Tartt.  This is a brilliantly done book, with not a single appealing character in it.  ...

I am having some surgery tomorrow, and any teacher knows that being out of the classroom is always more trouble than it's worth, with al...

This was a great week for poetry in my classroom.  In eighth grade, we're reading The Language Inside , by Holly Thompson.  I really enj...

One day in seventh grade this week, in connection with our reading of Behind the Mountains , by Edwidge Danticat, my students were sharing f...