Category: Stories from the Field

It Takes a Village to Write a Personal Narrative

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**Now that the school year is done, and I have more time to write, I hope to share some stories from my teaching experiences. Most likely, I will not post these stories in the order that they occurred. Thanks for reading my scattered stories.

During class one Friday, I introduced my 9th-grade English students to their final writing assignment: a personal narrative.  I challenged the students to think of stories from their own lives that elicit strong emotions: fear, excitement, anguish, joy, disgust, hope, or any other feeling that they can convey in words.

As students brainstormed ideas, one student asked, “Miss Shoaf, what if I don’t have anything interesting to write about?”  

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Musings From a Month of Teaching

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I was thrown into the classroom on January 20, 2021. I say “thrown” in the figurative sense — no one physically lifted me and tossed me into room 205 — but I also say “thrown” in a somewhat literal sense. When I awoke that morning, I did not know I would be teaching within a few hours. My computer pinged with an email during breakfast, and a little while later, I found myself reading the prologue of Romeo and Juliet to high school freshmen.

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This is Amazing Grace

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When I was in high school, it took a lot to make me cry. Even when I broke my nose, I barely shed a tear (from my recollection, at least).  At some point in college, my emotions caught up to me, and nowadays, it doesn’t take much to open the tear ducts.  Therefore, I should not have been surprised when I started tearing up during chapel at school a few weeks ago.

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