Free-Range Thinking

After thirty years of teaching, I am the most excited about the school year I can ever remember being. Most of my excitement comes from what I did this summer. (Oh, no! not that old story! Alas, it’s true).
For many years I have been a member of the UCLA Writing Project, a group of 700 [...]

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If you are a fan of puns and wordplay, you might be thinking about now that free-range thought and chickens suggest something about this place where you and I find ourselves—the web. On the Internet, we are “free,” in a way that school rarely seems to be. Like these gorgeous chickens, we can roam [...]

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Throughout Los Angeles Unified, the 11th grade English curriculum is typically American Literature. (Interestingly, this is not true in all private schools or other schools in other states.) This year, our study of American Literature will be influenced by the organization of English and History classes into academies. We will have a special emphasis on [...]

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