Eric Hoefler

The World (of English) According to Me – Pt. 1

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

[I realize this post is long. If you'd rather read this post as black text on white background, you can use the "Print This" link to view the post in that format without actually having to print.] In an earlier post, Humanities and the DY/DAN Method, I linked to Dan Meyer‘s blog and his take [...]

Debate, Pop Culture, and Assessment

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

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I’ve been reading the “Bridging Differences” blog for a few months now and love it. These are two really smart, well-informed, thoughtful, and passionate educators engaged in one of the best examples of extended civil debate I’ve found online … and the hyperbole is justified. A few days ago, Deborah Meier posted “Let’s Play with [...]

Removing the Training Wheels

Monday, March 19, 2007

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[In an effort to get more specific and address more of the what, why, and how of my teaching practice, I'd like to outline how I begin to move students away from the five-paragraph essay and toward a more sophisticated understanding of writing. This is a long post because I want to be specific. I [...]

If There Were None

Sunday, March 4, 2007

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Questions about what, why, and how I teach are constant preoccupations of mine. I want to attempt to make my thoughts about these questions more explicit, in part due to recent conversations I’ve been having with others (online and off), and in part because one of the most important things teachers can do in a [...]

Working Backwards to Assessment

Friday, February 9, 2007

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I’m saying: we should teach to the test, as long as it’s an appropriate test, and to discover what an appropriate test is for each discipline and each course, we have to work carefully backwards. I’ve thought this for a while, but the last two posts over at Friends of Dave gave me a way [...]

Thougts on Context, Relevance, and School Reform

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

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Thougts on Context, Relevance, and School Reform

I don’t even have a beginner’s grasp on what School 2.0 might mean (and maybe that’s OK), but I have been playing with a question that seems to be moving in that direction. What if teachers worked as facilitators and translators, instead of gatekeepers and repositories of knowledge? Bear with me through some thinking-aloud … [...]

Important Things Require Vigilance

Sunday, January 14, 2007

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As the end of the first semester closes in, it’s time to review what I’ve been doing in my classroom. I’ve been aware of the changes in my teaching and teaching philosophy over the last year or so, but only nebulously. I think I’ve needed to allow that vague drifting in order to stay free [...]

Studios and Studiousness

Friday, December 1, 2006

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The Brooklyn Free School is an “institutional” example of “unschooling” that I wrote about a few days ago. My same agreements and concerns apply to both, and some of my concerns are apparently shared by parents and organizers of the free school, evidenced by a few requirements that are starting to creep in: Students will [...]

Cooking and Eating: On Interpretation of a Text

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

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I’ve started a “teaching reading” course–the last one in my Masters program. The first night, we tried to answer the questions: what is interpretation? and what is it we are doing when we interpret? A number of people, in discussing their own experiences, brought up the importance of relevance. But I don’t see relevance as [...]

Writers Reading Blogs

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

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I want my creative writing students to understand how important reading is to the development of writing, and I want them to be aware of what’s going on in the literary world as well as the world in general. One way to do this, I think, is to have them discover and read blogs … [...]