Classroom Management

Understanding Character through Screenwriting

By Phil Nast May 16, 2012 10:04 am

I want to contrast two pieces of writing I encountered this week. The first was Ann Patchett’s New York Time’s opinion piece on the Pulitzer Prize Board’s announcement they would name no winner in fiction this year. Three finalists…

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4 Tips To Help Teach Kids Guitar

By Brian Doherty May 3, 2012 3:00 pm

Teaching guitar to students has its challenges and rewards. In my experience, the more I teach it, the more I recognize the importance of breaking things down into smaller, more basic ideas, making it easier for students to consume. I’d…

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Identifying Ticks

By Phil Nast April 16, 2012 10:03 am

The rain was sporadic enough yesterday to take a hike in a local state park. The hardwoods were still bare. The only green were the leaves of what will become a carpet of wildflowers as the weather grows warmer. The…

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Making Connections, Building Rapport

By Phil Nast April 9, 2012 11:59 am

One year, I took an immediate and irrational dislike to a sixth grader in an afternoon social studies class. I was puzzled. The school year had just begun. I was still learning names. She was quiet and well behaved. There…

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Combining Exercise and Reading

By Phil Nast April 3, 2012 2:16 pm

Where I live, warm weather has arrived and the roads are dry. Bikers are out and runners, more than just the hardcore who bundle like Ralphie’s kid brother in A Christmas Story to run year round. And lately I see…

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Some Science of Bread

By Phil Nast March 26, 2012 10:33 am

In the 90s, I inherited a bread machine from my father. One of the first automatic bread makers, it resembles R2D2 and produces a cylindrical loaf, an absurdity for kids who know that all bread is square. The bread it…

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Teaching Kids to Form Their Own Rock ‘n’ Roll Bands

By Brian Doherty March 6, 2012 3:25 pm

I’ve been a music teacher for a while and I feel very fortunate to be one. This year, I’ve embarked on a mission to teach my 3rd, 4th and 5th grade students to form, and then play in,…

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Media Literacy and Political Campaigns

By Phil Nast February 9, 2012 10:12 am

Political campaigns provide a perfect opportunity to plan cross-curricular lessons and activities in language, social studies, psychology, and economics.

A recent article in New York underscores the need to educate media literate students in a cynical political environment. Joe Hagan’s…

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Creating Student Poetry Anthologies

By Phil Nast January 30, 2012 4:59 pm

We’ve all had the experience of sharing something we like: a joke, a passage from a story, a movie, a tie, a song, Mom’s fruitcake only to be disappointed with its reception. I know I often disappointment my son, but…

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Chess as an Educational Tool

By Phil Nast January 17, 2012 11:17 am

Last summer, in the classroom next to the one in which I taught writing skills, boys and girls learned to play chess. Some were younger than ten. From time to time, I’d look in to see them quietly studying chessboards.…

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