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BooksNews & Notes
Professional Development
News & Notes (12.08.07)
Well, as I feared, I cannot find the time to maintain the blog and so apologize for starting what I cannot finish---or even start, really! I just have too many things going on and must keep my mind focused on what matters most: my family, my teaching, and my writing, which is what ultimately helps you the most. I would love to have time each day to reflect on the blog. Right now, however, I am working on three different books/projects and have just released several important new books (new edition of ETC, first in the Teacher's Essenital Guide series, and McDougal Literature program). I apologize for getting your hopes up. I had many wonderful emails about the prospect of the blog. Perhaps down the road. In the end, it's more important that I go out to the coast to cut down a Christmas tree with my family today and spend the afternoon working on my classes (while taking notes to use in the book on writing I'm working on).
Thanks for your understanding and continued support. Best wishes to you for the holidays and the year ahead.
Jim
(10.21.07)
I am beginning to experiment with the world of blogging, though I am concerned about my ability to contribute to it regularly. Still, I want to try it. I welcome the more informal, reflective, conversational nature of this forum. The blog is englishcompanion blog. Click here to visit it.
As I am no longer teaching the ACCESS program––more on that in a minute––I have deleted the ACCESS page I had on the website as it is no longer up to date. As for the program, it continues at Burligame and is thriving under the guidance of Morgan Hallabrin, a teacher who joined our department last year. Her success is especially important to me as I have been committed all along to the idea that the ACCESS program, or other such programs, must not be dependent on one person but should be based on principles that others could follow to achieve similar or even better results. Ms. Hallabrin has accepted and set about improving upon the core principles outlined in ACCESSing School: Teaching Struggling Readers to Achieve Academic and Personal Success.
10.14.07
Hello to all ec.com visitors! I had some new books to announce and wanted to take a minute to check in and tell you what is going on, what to look forward to regarding my work and this site. I am very excited about a new line of books coming out with Scholastic: The Teacher's Essential Guide series. These are small, short, but very detailed books about a specific subject. They are intended to offer you a pocket guide to, for example, classroom management, that draws on the latest research and my own experiences in the classroom. Each book will be roughly 100 pages. The first one, The Teacher's Essential Guide to Classroom Management is available (in November) through any major bookstore or online seller (Amazon) or the Scholastic web site. The second book in the series, The Teacher's Essential Guide to Effective Instruction, should be out in the spring. I am just starting work on the third in the series, The Teacher's Essential Guide to Writing Instruction. There will be about eight books in the series when it is finished. I am grateful to Scholastic for the opportunity to write these books and thrilled to be working with them to help make my work available to a wider audience of teachers. That doesn't mean I have left Heinemann or that I appreciate them any less: a new edition of The English Teacher's Companion is coming out in November and is available online through Heinemann or any other online bookstore. This is a serious revision of the book, which first came out ten years ago. Also, I am happy to announce that the complete Academic Workout program is complete (grades 6-10) and available now through Curriculum Associates. I use "AWO" almost daily in my freshman CP English class and continue to find it very helpful. Finally, I am pleased to announce my role as a senior consultant for the just-released McDougal Littell Literature program, a project I (and many other incredible people) have been working on for five years and is now available.
My classes this year---Freshman CP English and AP English Lit---are going very well and the kids are teaching me many new things. I think all the time about this web site and my desire to revise it. I can only say I hope to do so in the near future, especially the Weekly Reader section, which I intend to put to use in my own freshman class once again in the near future.
I will be at NCTE and hope to see some of you there. Thanks for continuing to visit the site and use my books to help you do your work. We are all in this together.
Take care,
Jim
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