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About Me


My name is Kevin English. I am a former English teacher turned assistant principal, and I absolutely love the work that I do. At a time when many of my friends have left the profession or are considering leaving, I'm clinging to it.


I recognize the public nature of these posts, and in no way do my posts reflect the views of my employer or any of the organizations I am affiliated with. 

Popular posts from this blog

Making Time to Struggle

I recently traveled to Northern Ontario with family to fish for four days on Lake Wabatongushi. Aside from “unplugging” for several days, fishing with my wife and our family reminded me of how important it is for educators to put themselves in situations in which they are not the experts in the room and where they must engage in productive struggle in order to figure things out.

So let me start by saying that I am not a fisherman. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy fishing. I used to go fishing with my grandfather when I was really young. Heck, there was even a time when I remember exuberently telling my grandmother how we “went fishing with no poles” when I was six or seven. But despite that, I hadn’t really gone fishing since I was a teenager and would occasionally fish from the riverbank at my grandparents’ house.

So I knew that even agreeing to go on a fishing trip would put me in a situation where I would have to be vulnerable, ask questions, and try many times in order to figure things…
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Targets and Time

I just finished Cris Tovani and Elizabeth Birr Moje's No More Telling as Teaching: Less Lecture, More Engaged Learning from Heinemann's Not This But That series edited by Ellin Oliver Keene and Nell Duke.

Needless to say, I pick up anything that's by Tovani and Moje because of Tovani's belief in the workshop model and Moje's extensive work in both disciplinary and out of school literacies.

After finishing this quick read, I've been thinking a lot about two things.

First, how we spend our time matters. I get less than 60 minutes with students each hour. Time is a hot commodity! Because of that, I am constantly looking at ways to maximize instruction. If I pass papers back this way or if I move this to this point in time, I can gain another minute. And those minutes add up! Sometimes, however, it feels like there is just never enough time. All teachers know that. In fact, I've yet to meet a teacher admit that she or he has too much time with students, especia…
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A Lasting Impact

I love graduation season. It's a time to celebrate hard work and academic achievement. For many students in both my hometown and where I work, many students who are graduating are the first in their families to graduate from high school.

As teachers, sometimes we forget that. I've been guilty of assuming before that because we're past Y2K that everyone has a high school diploma. I remember my own realization when I found out my mom's mom hadn't graduated high school. Encouraged by a doctor to drop out (I remember her vaguely mentioning something about an enlarged heart), she was told that she wouldn't live to be 18. Naturally, she carpe diem-ed. (Well, there wasn't much living it up. She married and had five kids. She also lived to her late 70s.)

So as I sat on the dais at my hometown's graduation ceremony, I reminded myself to remain calm about the air horns, the catcalls, the shouting. High school graduation might not seem like a big deal to me (everyo…
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