5 Top Posts of 2019

The difference a decade makes: Essenburgs at the end of 2019 and 2009 (constant: my sweater!)

Personally significant events of the 2010’s for me included gaining 2 sons-in-law, becoming a grandmother, losing my mother, moving twice, and blogging. This blog’s inaugural post I wrote 7-1/2 years ago. The 344 posts I’ve written since then have been transformative for me, disciplining me in reflective practice, cementing my identity as a writer which makes me more effective as a writing teacher, and keeping me closer to the digital divide. The past 2 years around this time I’ve reflected on my blog’s most popular posts of the year (see here for 2017 and here for 2018). What posts did readers find most interesting in 2019?   

#1: “Writing toward the Answers” (7/12) This was a “doing what I teach” post—a poem I wrote this summer as I processed the grief of a number of losses both significant and more trivial. While it felt so personal that I hesitated to publish it, in 5 months it has shot to my 3rd most-read post. The poem uses the analogy of the answers in the back of a math textbook to explore the difference between knowing the right answer to life’s conundrums and living the struggle: “My faith tells me the answer: all will be well, but sometimes my heart is still working through the process of coming up with that answer itself.” 

#2 “Nurturing Questions” (3/1) Teaching is so much more fun when the students are formulating their own questions and seeking or constructing answers to them, rather than hunting for answers to the teacher’s questions. But this takes some intentionality: “I suspect it has something to do with modeling, a bit of competition, acceptance that there are a variety of types of questions, and a lot of practice.” This post  explored what that looked like in the juniors’ study of The Scarlet Letter. (This topic seems to be perennially interesting, as the post “Who’s Asking the Questions?” from 2018 is #10 in my all-time list.)

#3 “Trying Online Book Discussion Using Workshopping the Canon” (7/19) This was a 2-for-the-price-of-1 post—a review of a new process (using a Facebook group for a book discussion) and of a professional book (blending class study of a single text with a workshop approach to supporting texts). 

#4: “Differentiating Process Helps Students Assimilate New Concepts” (4/26) Sometimes I struggle with how to access different ways of learning when English class is about the skills of reading, writing, speaking. The point is, when the skill is the target, there are no options, but when a concept is the target, there are many options. Here’s an example from my AP 11 class. (Differentiation, too, is a hot topic, with “Baby Steps in Differentiation” from 2017 at #7 in my all-time list.)

#5: “When I Work Less and Students Learn More” (5/10) Was this a click-bait title? No—because it’s true! The internet is full of resources we use as adults when we want to learn something. Here are some ways I connect students with those resources rather than creating my own. “I was impressed again with the beauty of the teaching hack of directing students to real-life resources. 

• It saves me having to create things. 
• It connects class to life. 
• Advice seems so much more authoritative coming from a real-life person (as opposed to your teacher). 
• Students gain access to tools they can continue to use long after they’ve lost all Mrs. Essenburg’s handouts.”

As soon as I’d written the first sentence of this post, I realized I could actually link blog post titles to each personally significant development of the decade. While I’m not sure what the next decade or even year hold, I know that a disciplined practice for processing both the big challenges of living faithfully and the daily challenges of teaching effectively will help me grow through them. For the time being, that will continue to include this blog. Will it always? Who knows! A decade ago I probably hadn’t heard of blogging, let alone imagined myself doing it. Maybe there’s another unimagined platform out there I’ll be using!