To show teachers of all humanities how to transform their classrooms into intellectual practice fields.
Michael Degen, Ph.D., has been teaching AP English for over thirty years, primarily at Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas. He has served as a College Board consultant and workshop presenter nationally and throughout Texas, where he has provided instructional guidance for over 5o school districts. He is the author of Crafting Expository Argument, Prospero’s Magic, and Virginia Woolf: A Contribution to the Essay Form. His most recent book is co-authored with his former student and colleague Ian Berry– The Instructional Coach’s Playbook: Classroom Strategies Informed by Neuroscience, Athletics, and Psychology. Curriculum Vita
Ian Berry has been an English teacher at Jesuit College Preparatory School in Dallas for the past decade. He has studied literature at the University of Texas and the Sorbonne. He first practiced “the game” in English as a student in Degen’s AP Literature course, and has been playing it ever since. When he is not thinking about the classroom, he enjoys long-distance running, page-turner detective stories, and French poetry.
Through Dr. Degen’s workshop I learned an approach for helping my students develop their analytical voice, a task which can often feel mysterious and frustrating to students. Dr. Degen provided detailed feedback and encouragement that helped me grasp and apply material. I now have powerful tools to help my students enter the world of interpretation, and am excited to bring what I learned back to my classroom!
Dr. Degen–this has been a tremendous three days. Your brain research information, coupled with your techniques of teaching has been encouraging and clarifying. Enlightening. I feel like I actually have many things to bring back to school and implement immediately. I am grateful, to say the least.
I think the way you “trick” the kids into recognizing themes and the big ideas in literature and poetry is great. I am going to try giving the kiddos smaller chunks of writing, so that they can make the associations on smaller sentences, phrases, and such. I think especially for my 8th graders when they approach difficult text, it is easy for them to give up and say they don’t get it. The smaller bites will allow all of them to feel some success and allow them to build on it. I can see where this will be helpful for all of them, but most especially for those students who are struggling with literature.
I finally, finally understand how to teach a student to develop a line of reasoning. The chart, although creating one is not my go-to move, will help kids develop their own lines of reasoning.
Thanks for what you do and thanks for sharing with me!
Excellent workshop, so much to integrate into my classroom. Thank you Dr. Degen!
Thank you so much for the session, and for you patience while I was participating on the road! I solidified a lot of elements I only got a partial hold of two summers ago, and I feel confident about implementing much of this in my 7th grade English classroom. Thanks, Dr. Degen!
You really have a wealth of knowledge and I appreciate all that you shared with us!
Great conference with fantastic and useful information. Thank you.
Once you teach students what the “L2 Play” means, they can quickly discern between plot and an interpretive idea. When giving feedback to students who are merely re-telling the details of the story, you’ll just say, “I haven’t heard any L2–increase the quantity.”
The effectiveness of the “Plays” is their simplicity and clarity. They turn what seems for some a mysterious power of interpretation into an intellectual movement that is concrete and observable.
Yes– the interpretive strategies work with all texts – no need to change a system when approaching a poem or a cartoon or a nonfiction text.
Our primary graphic organizer the Evidence-Association Chart visualizes for students the basic movements of reading and provides the data for piecing together sentences, paragraphs, and whole essays. The Paragraph Chart focuses more precisely on four concrete plays that develop unity and coherence inside the paragraph. Our math/science students particular enjoy the structured data collection and alignment the organizers provide.
Clarity. Model. Repetition. Feedback
