psychology dector

I have written before about Robert Frost and his love of trees. One of his poems in particular keeps coming back to me these days: I wonder about the trees. Why do we wish to bear Forever the noise of these More than another noise So close to your dwelling place? We suffer them by the day Till we lose all measure of pace, And fixity in our joys, And acquire a listening air. They are that that talks of going But never gets away; And that talks no less for knowing, As it grows wiser and older, That now it means to stay. My feet tug at the floor And my head sways to my shoulder Sometimes when I watch trees sway, From the window or the door. I shall set forth for somewhere, I shall make the reckless choice Some day when they are in voice And tossing so as to scare The white clouds over them on. I shall have less to say, But I shall be gone. Sometimes, we must listen to the silences. We must wait for the angels to lead us home.

I’m northbound on the 405 heading up into the Sepulveda pass, and I am screaming. The wind matches my howling through the open window of my tiny compact car. It is the moment, the pause in the universe, when I feel my life change. A single instant, and nothing is ever the same again. Such a moment of singular transfiguration, and I know I will never experience anything like it again. On the passenger seat next to me are a stack of textbooks: social studies, English, math, religion, spelling, literature, science. I am a teacher. I am a teacher. The sky is the most amazing shade of blue on an early summer afternoon. There it is: St. Joan of Arc School. The iron letters line the concrete apron over the double doors. The playground, a kindergarten building—that’s new—the church hall, the asphalt parking lot, the old convent building. I walk up Gateway Boulevard to the doors and peer through the dusty glass. My old classroom to the left, the school office door on the right, but something ...

I first shared This I Believe essays from National Public Radio (NPR) with my students a few months ago. We listened to pod casts of several essays, discussed their power and resonance, and then listened to a few more. I issued a set of guidelines and a rubric and off they went to create beautiful, heartfelt pieces that were a joy to read and comment upon. So what is so special about these essays, broadcast over the radio in the authors’ own voices? They are simple. They are emotional. They are profound. While listening, my students were mesmerized, and often gasped at a surprise turn, or a particularly powerful experience as related by the authors. Using them in my classroom changed the way we wrote, and made everything more immediate and present. The writing we listened to, and the writing we did ourselves, took on new meaning and incredible intensity. The history of the series is an interesting piece of writing itself. Here is this from the This I Believe website : “This I Believ...

Today, my students participated in a journalism conference at the school. Titled, “The Future of Journalism In The Digital Age,” the conference featured a discussion with three local journalists, Paul Chaderjian, Allen Yekikian, and Liana Aghajanian. My senior student, Vatche Yousefian , moderated the festivities. Paul Chaderjian has a number of credits as a journalist in print, digital media, and television news. He has worked for ABC News , Asbarez News , The Armenian Reporter , Horizon Armenian TV , and most recently, Haytoug: The Official Publication of the Armenian Youth Federation Western United States . Allen Yekikian represented digital media, having worked as the Assistant Editor and Online Media Director at Asbarez News as well as Haytoug . He is a graduate of UCLA, and has degrees in history and Armenian Studies. Liana Aghajanian gave my students the print and digital news perspectives, having worked at The Glendale News-Press and Burbank Leader , both part of the Los ...

I know we have had some high profile movies and books that show a dedicated teacher who inspires her students (inner city kids make for good drama) to write meaningful prose. Usually, the teacher winds up resigning at the end of the movie because her methods were just too “out there,” because we all know that anyone who professes to love to teach teenagers to write, and write meaningfully, must be a little bit nuts. The fact of the matter is that teachers who can get kids not only to write, but to care about what they write enough to use a process and struggle to say something meaningful, are few and far between. In twenty-four years, I have not taught with many teachers who were dedicated to writing. Sure, I’ve worked with grammarians, literature buffs, amateur actors and screen writers, but a good, solid teacher of writing, who slogged through endless papers because her students wrote every week, who tried to publish student work, and was willing to read draft after draft after draft...

Usually, around this time of year I am worrying about which books to teach next fall. I have written blog posts in the past detailing my reading lists for the coming year, and discussing the merits of this book or that book. This year is different. My obsession this year is the teaching of writing and grammar. We will be adopting writing and grammar textbooks for the high school English classes next year, and some literature will have to be cut from the syllabus to make room for this instruction. Although my students continue to be under-read, the teaching of writing skills and the structure of the language has become a dire necessity. SAT exams have grammar and writing sections, and I am discovering that students know less and less about the structure of English, and do not recognize even the terminology of grammar. If a student does not know what pronoun-antecedent agreement is, he cannot fix a sentence containing such an error. Recently, I embarked on a thorough examination of how w...

Every day, it becomes more and more apparent that blogs are the future of publication. The middle man—the magazine, newspaper, or book publisher—is virtually eliminated. Blogs are people speaking to people. Yes, that brings with it some problems like editing and relevance, but I find that reading blogs is like sifting through sand for diamonds. I drop in, read for a while, and if the writing stays fresh and interesting, I hang around. If not, there is always the delete button. I have written in this space about William Michaelian , his poetry books , his Author’s Press Series , and his expansive website. His blog, Recently Banned Literature , offers daily doses of his poetry, ruminations, dreams, recent book acquisitions from local thrift shops, and other “marginalia.” William has amassed quite a following on the internet through blogging and Facebook, giving him a plethora of readers who often interact with his work within their own creations. He posts drawings, art work, and photog...