For the past five years, I have been slowly improving and managing the “ Grammar House Cup ”, our Harry Potter-themed, inter-homeroom competition. (More on that later. But come on… if YOU had exactly four homerooms in your middle school, wouldn’t you do this, too?) And for all five years of the “GHC”, I wished I could find a way to play Quidditch. But for a while, I couldn’t figure out how to do it WELL with the limited space of the classroom (and while engaging ALL the students instead of just some). This past May, I finally figured it out and beta tested it with all of my 7th and 8th graders. I got the supplies from the gym teacher, grabbed my recess whistle, and took students outside. (This activity was actually part of our final exam review!) ...

The good news : by senior year, many teens ARE good writers who can crank out a thoughtful essay that answers the prompt. The bad news : a majority of the rough drafts I see cross my desk (as a tutor) are really NOT submission ready. Not even close. While I don't pretend to speak on behalf of admissions officers here, my inner English teacher is cringing while reading my students' work, the drafts that are supposed to not only gain admission for them but should ideally also win scholarships and/or admission to honors programs (and the like). What's worse is that, at least in my area, my students are telling me three things: 1. My English teacher doesn't talk about admissions essays. We are on our own. 2. Yeah, we wrote essays for school, but there was only one short comment on it. My teacher says that (he/she) doesn't want to grade or judge my life. 3. I'm in an (AP/IB/honors) English class, so my teacher says we don't need help writing our ess......

As I write this, it's March, the time when many educators begin planning for the next school year, and when teachers have to start deciding whether or not they're going to return in the fall. Meanwhile, almost daily, my various news feeds seem to bring me articles about teachers who quit, teachers who choose to stay, and theories proposing reasons why teachers burn out . Most of these discussions bring up fair points, but I almost always walk away from them disappointed. ...

You must think I've lost my mind. Why make our end-of-year checklist LONGER? The countdown to summer vacation is my most frantic time of the year, tied with Back to School season. Grading assignments, grading final exams, cleaning up the classroom, making report cards, and all of our end-of-year traditions and field trips make May and early June a CRAZY time. Despite the chaos, I'm ADDING five more WORTHY things to my to-do list. I have never regretted squeezing these in. ...