December 26, 2018
Teaching About Designer Babies/Designing Humans (and the story of American Eugenics)
When I was asking around about teaching methods or topics that excited students, I was particularly intrigued to hear about Dr. Phyllis van Slyck’s course, “Designer Babies/Designing Humans (and the story of […]
December 18, 2018
What Special Ed Has to Teach Ed: Speaking With the Woman Who Taught Me To Read When No One Else Could
My own struggle with learning disabilities left me with very strong feelings on education. With the help of one very brilliant and patient woman, Veronica Russo, I was given the […]
December 6, 2018
Asking College and High School Students How They Want to be Taught
After teaching college for ten years, some days I feel like a wrinkled old pro, but many days I still find the practice of conveying information to young people to […]
November 30, 2018
What I Learned About Teaching College From Being a Parent of Young Kids and Vice Versa
When I got the email asking preschool parents to lead an activity with their kids, I started preparing a poetry writing exercise. I could tell the teachers were dubious as […]
November 16, 2018
Adventures in Pedagogy: Teaching Your Students to Become Textual Flâneurs (plus pedagogy links)
This is the first essay in my new series on teaching for the Kenyon Review, Adventures in Pedagogy. Each year that I teach college English, film, composition, and creative writing, […]
November 15, 2017
Christopher Soto on the June Jordan Teaching Corp
DM: Dr. Joshua Bennett and The Center for Justice at Columbia University have invited you to teach a community-based writing workshop that serves both the Columbia University student body and also members […]
September 27, 2015
Love Letter to a Textbook: Structure & Surprise
There should be a perfect German compound word for the particular sustained balance of elation and relief a teacher feels when teaching from a new-to-you textbook that just works. Someday, perhaps, I’ll […]
July 30, 2015
Teach This (Part V)
[Continued from earlier posts on teaching poetry] Robert Hayden’s “Night, Death, Mississippi” is a poem that horrifies me. Each time I encounter the domestic scene and colloquial voice, it feels like […]
July 20, 2015
Poetry and Play (Part I)
When I was in Amsterdam earlier this summer, the Dutch historian and cultural theorist Johan Huizinga came up in multiple conversations about poetry; more specifically, his 1938 book Homo Ludens: Proeve […]
August 12, 2013
Lectures With Nothing (Or Everything) To Say: On Mary Ruefle
[This post serves as the introduction for a soon-to-be-published interview with Ruefle.] The function of the anecdote in criticism is double-edged: at once ailment and salve. But in considering Mary […]