Roxanna Elden's Blog, page 10
January 4, 2019
Back-to-School Teacher Dreams in Adequate Yearly Progress: A Novel
I’ve always been interested in the dreams so many teachers seem to have at the end of a school vacation – so much so that I’ve written about The Bathrobe Dream and Other Teacher Nightmares for a few publications, and also talked about it on a podcast with Pius Wong, of the K-12 Education Engineering... Read more »
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August 20, 2018
Non-fiction Books Listed in the Acknowledgments of Adequate Yearly Progress
Even though Adequate Yearly Progress is a novel, it owes a big debt to work by journalists and memoirists – so much so that there’s a list of non-fiction books listed in the acknowledgments. You’ll find the complete list below. Some of the books are specifically education-related, some not. All are well-written, informative, and worth... Read more »
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August 12, 2018
Read “The Faculty Meeting Chapter” for Free Here
The second chapter of Adequate Yearly Progress: A Novel takes place at a back-to-school faculty meeting. You can read the full chapter for free here. (Extra credit if you’ve been to a recent faculty meeting where some of these things happened.) The first chapter of the book follows language arts teacher Lena Wright, who walks... Read more »
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July 25, 2018
Want a “signed” copy of Adequate Yearly Progress? Here’s what to do.
If this page is still live and you’ve found your way to it, that means I’m still (somewhat more quietly at this point) happy to send out signed stickers for people’s books. To get a signed sticker, please send any proof of purchase to aypnovel@gmail.com. Please include your mailing address and any information about what... Read more »
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April 24, 2018
Writing “Don’ts” from Top Authors
Recently I condensed my notes from 12 years of courses at the Miami Writers Institute and 12 years of building my own writing career into 12 days of emails. The notes from these courses contained many gems on the “do’s” of writing. But what about the “don’ts?” Some of the most interesting thoughts on writing... Read more »
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March 28, 2018
How Do You Keep a Writers’ Group Going?
I don’t actually know. The few times I’ve tried to start groups of my own, they’ve fizzled within a year or so. But over the course of taking different writing classes, I’ve met people who have formed long term writing groups, which have provided support for their careers and improved their writing. Here’s advice from... Read more »
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March 23, 2018
9 Great Quotes About Writing from Steve Almond
Steve Almond is an author of both fiction and non-fiction. His most recent book is Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country. He also teaches creative writing workshops, including one called Short Stories that Sing, which I took in 2009 through the Miami Writers Institute. Here are a few great quotes from... Read more »
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March 10, 2018
A Few (More) Great Examples of Humor Writing
If you’re signed up for the free, six-week humor writing mini-course and are looking for some extra examples of humor writing, I’ll be adding them here on an ongoing basis. These are pieces I found hilarious, and they’re definitely short enough to read in one sitting (or share with students if you’re using the humor writing... Read more »
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March 8, 2018
Quotes About Tribalism, Us/Them Behavior and the “Green Beard Effect” From BEHAVE, by Robert Sapolsky
The quotes below are from Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, by Robert Sapolsky. I’ve taken inspiration from this book for both teacher trainings and writing workshops, including a recent writing workshop in which all of the exercises were based on behavioral science. For one of the prompts, I read this collection... Read more »
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March 7, 2018
Behavioral Science Facts That Also Make Great Writing Prompts
Who says science can’t be poetic? Here are some science facts that would make great starting points for a story or poem. I recently used these as prompts in a writing workshop whose theme was Using Behavioral Science to Build Better Scenes and Characters. Below, you’ll find the citations for the original studies, as well... Read more »
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