Saturday, February 22, 2020

Learning Keeps Us Young, While Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors Grow Our Humanity

›
Henry Ford said, "anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest th...
Tuesday, February 11, 2020

The American Tapestry: Individualism and Community in John Steinbeck's East of Eden and my Classroom

›
Comprised of individuals, families, stories, and legacies from across the world and nation, American is essentially a tapestry.  Each of u...
Monday, February 10, 2020

Annotation Fatigue? Try this!

›
Skilled readers actually  engage  with a text.  What does an engaged reader look like as an adult?  This question led me to notice that ...
Tuesday, December 10, 2019

2019 Top Ten Reads

›
ROCHA'S TOP TEN 2019 BOOKLIST As the year (and decade!) comes to a close, it is time to look back on some of my very favor...
Wednesday, May 29, 2019

2018-2019: What Matters Most

›
Confession: my goal of a blog a quarter quickly disappeared once I got a student teacher and herniated a disk resulting in urgent surgery.  ...
Friday, December 14, 2018

Art and Literature: Creativity Unleashed

›
Art and Literature are partners, but they do not always get equal press.  For example, when I first started teaching (yes, 17 years ago) wri...
Monday, November 5, 2018

The Struggles of October--Reflections of a Tired Teacher

›
For some reason, likely survival, I forget every year that October is hard.  Very hard.  The newness wears off, the meetings begin, the extr...