8 Things to STOP Doing When Teaching Public Speaking


We all know “good” and “bad” speakers when we see them, but it's shocking how often we teachers either ignore bad habits, don't explicitly teach good habits, or accidentally reinforce bad speaking with the types of speaking we assign.

IN OUR DEFENSE, speaking in all its forms is the category of English class that is usually given the least attention in teacher-ed programs, so when we attempt to teach it ourselves, we have to either self-teach best practices or fall back on what we remember from our own days in grades K-12... but some of those actions belong in the past.

(I should also mention that some of these are things I learned the hard way, so by no means do I claim to be a perfect teacher! Learn from my mistakes to save yourself some stress.)

Though there are always exceptions to these suggestions, here are some situations that English teachers should seriously think twice about before we assign and assess speaking.

10 Ways to Help Teen Writers Revise

Teacher friends, moment of truth: in my top ten list of irritating scenarios as an English teacher, one of them is looking at a student’s so-called “improved” draft that looks exactly the same as the last time I saw it.


If I make time to give formative feedback on a rough draft, I want the student to USE IT. If the student got the chance to revise a final draft and raise a grade, then the new one needs to fix the last draft’s problems instead of ignore them.


And if students are asked to REVISE their writing, heaven help them if they only fix a few commas and try to get past me.

9 Tricks to Help Students FINISH That Book


This battle of wills is perhaps the most epic, universal, and notorious problem that English teachers face, even more than grading struggles: getting students to ACTUALLY read that book, short story, article, or poem.