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The online home of 'Sunday Routine,' featuring a complete archive of columns that chronicle the Sundays of newsworthy New Yorkers, going back to 2009.

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I love these for craft and structure study!  A great entryway.

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How a World Cup Podcaster (and Messi Superfan) Spends Her Sundays

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Jasmine Garsd explores what it means to be from Argentina as its star soccer player competes in what could be his last World Cup.

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Common Lit - great options for Paired Texts

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Common Lit - great options for Paired Texts

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https://www.commonlit.org/en/library?contentTypes=text_set&initiatedFrom=library

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For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Click here for instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your web browser.

CommonLit is a nonprofit that has everything teachers and schools need for top-notch literacy instruction: a full-year ELA curriculum, benchmark assessments, and formative data.

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CommonLit | CommonLit Library | Browse Content by Theme, Grade Level and More

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For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Click here for instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your web browser. CommonLit is a nonprofit that has everything teachers and schools need for top-notch literacy instruction: a full-year ELA curriculum, benchmark assessments, and formative data.

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Newsela - many options for pairing texts

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Newsela - many options for pairing texts

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https://newsela.com/

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It's time to improve literacy skills during social studies instruction and ensure that readers of all abilities have what they need to access grade-level social studies concepts.

Join us on Thursday, December 7 for a look at scaffolded materials that provide extra literacy support while building key social studies concepts and skills.

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Newsela | Content and assessment platform

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Content Aligned To National & State Standard, Flexible To Support Relevant Curriculum. Find the Perfect Piece Of Content For Lessons. Go beyond the book.

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https://www.readworks.org/rw/6th-8th-grade-paired-text-question-sets#!contentTab:search/q:/g:343/t:/pt:P/features:/

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Assign articles and research-based reading comprehension curriculum to your students at www.readworks.org, completely free.

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Writers pen love letters to overlooked or underappreciated literature, film, music, art, food, drink, activities and more.

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Posts about mentor texts written by Xochitl Bentley, Abigail Lund, megankortlandt, Jay, and Brett Vogelsinger

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Teach and learn with The Times: Resources for bringing the world into your classroom

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Wonderful mentor texts for Quickwrites & zooming in on specific craft moves

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Wonderful mentor texts for Quickwrites & zooming in on specific craft moves

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Scholastic Scope for skill based intervention

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Scholastic Scope for skill based intervention

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What's Inside

Ready-to-Go Teaching Kits for Every Text

Immerse your students in the most exciting reading experiences. Every Scope text is carefully crafted for students' interests and abilities and is packaged with rich multimodal support tools for joyful teaching and learning.

Plus! You'll always be confident that you're reaching every reader with an ever-expanding set of differentiation tools, like thoughtfully leveled texts, audio read-aloud support, and much more.
EXPLORE AN ISSUE

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Scholastic Scope | A complete multigenre language arts teaching package

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Take your students' ELA skills to the next level with Scope!

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Detroit's First All Digital Sports Network!

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The A.V. Club - Pop culture obsessives writing for the pop culture obsessed.

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Pop culture obsessives writing for the pop culture obsessed.

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Excellent resource for discussing hot topics in education as well lesson ideas for more engagement regarding reading and writing 

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Excellent resource for discussing hot topics in education as well lesson ideas for more engagement regarding reading and writing 

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I teach, I write, I travel, I talk—to help students become better readers and writers.

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Tweets by TCEA

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Ohio's PreK-12 Digital Library. Optimized by the Management Council.

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If you pre-order The Creativity Project from independent bookseller Bookbug, your copy will be signed by contributors Laurie Keller, Travis Jonker, John Schu, and Colby Sharp.

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I get a lot of my mentor texts from my own reading. When I remember to do so, I add to my own padlet to keep track of ideas. Not sure this padlet will provide other with a lot of ideas since I only keep personal notes, but it may be used as an example of what you could do to collect ideas.

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Stole this from Amy- this is amazing Amy!! I love the movie monologues!!

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AP Literature and Composition Facebook Group

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AP Literature and Composition Facebook Group

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https://www.facebook.com/groups/186856038378257/

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This is a group created by Brian Sztabnik for current and former instructors of Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition to share ideas, tips, and resources. When you first join, please...

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Hype House and the Los Angeles TikTok Mansion Gold Rush (Published 2020)

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The city is home to a land rush of “collab houses,” where the content creators are getting younger and younger.

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Harry Styles isn't exactly dressed down for lunch. He's got a white floppy hat that Diana Ross might have won from Elton in a poker game at Cher's mansion circa 1974, plus Gucci shades, a cashmere sweater, and blue denim bell-bottoms. His nail polish is pink and mint green. He's also carrying his purse - no other word for it - a yellow patent-canvas bag with the logo "Chateau Marmont." The tough old ladies who work at this Beverly Hills deli know him well. Gloria and Raisa dote on him, calling him "my love" and bringing him his usual tuna salad and iced coffee. He turns heads, to put it mildly, but nobody comes near because the waitresses hover around the booth protectively.

He was just a small-town English lad of 16 when he became his generation's pop idol with One Direction. When the group went on hiatus, he struck out on his own with his brash 2017 solo debut, whose lead single was the magnificently over-the-top six-minute piano ballad "Sign of the Times." Even people who missed out on One Direction were shocked to learn the truth: This pinup boy was a rock star at heart.

A quick highlight reel of Harry's 2019 so far: He hosted the Met Gala with Lady Gaga, Serena Williams, Alessandro Michele, and Anna Wintour serving an eyebrow-raising black lace red-carpet look. He is the official face of a designer genderless fragrance, Gucci's Mémoire d'une Odeur. When James Corden had an all-star dodgeball match on The Late Late Show, Harry got spiked by a hard serve from Michelle Obama, making him perhaps the first Englishman ever hit in the nads on TV by a First Lady.

Closer to his heart, he brought down the house at this year's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony with his tribute to his friend and idol Stevie Nicks. "She's always there for you," Harry said in his speech. "She knows what you need: advice, a little wisdom, a blouse, a shawl." He added, "She's responsible for more running mascara - including my own - than all the bad dates in history." (Backstage, Nicks accidentally referred to Harry's former band as "'NSync." Hey, a goddess can get away with that sort of thing.)

Harry has been the world's It boy for nearly a decade now. The weirdest thing about him? He loves being this guy. In a style of fast-lane celebrity that takes a ruthless toll on the artist's personality, creativity, sanity, Harry is almost freakishly at ease. He has managed to grow up in public with all his boyish enthusiasm intact, not to mention his manners. He's dated a string of high-profile women - but he never gets caught uttering any of their names in public, much less shading any of them. Instead of going the usual superstar-pop route - en vogue producers, celebrity duets, glitzy club beats - he's gone his own way, and gotten more popular than ever. He's putting the finishing touches on his new album, full of the toughest, most soulful songs he's written yet. As he explains, "It's all about having sex and feeling sad."

The Harry Charm is a force of nature, and it can be almost frightening to witness in action. The most startling example might be a backstage photo from February taken with one of his heroes, Van Morrison. You have never seen a Van picture like this one. He's been posing for photos for 50 years, and he's been refusing to crack a smile in nearly all of them. Until he met Harry - for some reason, Van beams like a giddy schoolgirl. What did Harry do to him? "I was tickling him behind his back," Harry confides. "Somebody sent me that photo - I think his tour manager took it. When I saw it, I felt like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction opening the case with the gold light shining. I was like, 'Fuck, maybe I shouldn't show this to anyone.'"

In interviews, Harry has always tended to coast on that charm, simply because he can. In his teens, he was in public every minute and became adept at guarding every scrap of his privacy. But these days, he's finding out he has things he wants to say. He's more confident about thinking out loud and seeing what happens. "Looser" is how he puts it. "More open. I'm discovering how much better it makes me feel to be open with friends. Feeling that vulnerability, rather than holding everything in."

Like a lot of people his age, he's asking questions about culture, gender, identity, new ideas about masculinity and sexuality. "I feel pretty lucky to have a group of friends who are guys who would talk about their emotions and be really open," he says. "My friend's dad said to me, 'You guys are so much better at it than we are. I never had friends I could really talk to. It's good that you guys have each other because you talk about real shit. We just didn't.'"

It's changed how he approaches his songs. "For me, it doesn't mean I'll sit down and be like, 'This is what I have for dinner, and this is where I eat every day, and this is what I do before I go to bed,'" he says. "But I will tell you that I can be really pathetic when I'm jealous. Feeling happier than I've ever been, sadder than I've ever been, feeling sorry for myself, being mad at myself, being petty and pitiful - it feels really different to share that."

At times, Harry sounds like an ordinary 25-year-old figuring his shit out, which, of course, he is. (Harry and I got to know each other last year, when he got in touch after reading one of my books, though I'd already been writing about his music for years.) It's strange to hear him talk about shedding his anxieties and doubts, since he's always come across as one of the planet's most confident people. "While I was in the band," he says, "I was constantly scared I might sing a wrong note. I felt so much weight in terms of not getting things wrong. I remember when I signed my record deal and I asked my manager, 'What happens if I get arrested? Does it mean the contract is null and void?' Now, I feel like the fans have given me an environment to be myself and grow up and create this safe space to learn and make mistakes."

We slip out the back and spend a Saturday afternoon cruising L.A. in his 1972 silver Jaguar E-type. The radio doesn't work, so we just sing "Old Town Road." He marvels, "'Bull riding and boobies' - that is potentially the greatest lyric in any song ever." Harry used to be pop's mystery boy, so diplomatic and tight-lipped. But as he opens up over time, telling his story, he reaches the point where he's pitching possible headlines for this profile. His best: "Soup, Sex, and Sun Salutations."

How did he get to this new place? As it turns out, the journey involves some heartbreak. Some guidance from David Bowie. Some Transcendental Meditation. And more than a handful of magic mushrooms. But mostly, it comes down to a curious kid who can't decide whether to be the world's most ardently adored pop star, or a freaky artiste. So he decides to be both.

Two things about English rock stars never change: They love Southern California, and they love cars. A few days after Harry proclaimed the genius of "Old Town Road," we're in a different ride - a Tesla - cruising the Pacific Coast Highway while Harry sings along to the radio. " Californiaaaaaa! " he yells from behind the wheel as we whip past Zuma Beach. "It sucks!" There's a surprising number of couples along the beach who seem to be arguing. We speculate on which ones are breaking up and which are merely having the talk. "Ah, yes, the talk," Harry says dreamily. "Ye olde chat."

Harry is feeling the smooth Seventies yacht-rock grooves today, blasting Gerry Rafferty, Pablo Cruise, Hall and Oates. When I mention that Nina Simone once did a version of "Rich Girl," he needs to hear it right away. He counters by blowing my mind with Donny Hathaway's version of John Lennon's "Jealous Guy."

Harry raves about a quintessential SoCal trip he just tried: a "cold sauna," a process that involves getting locked in an ice chamber. His eyelashes froze. We stop for a smoothie ("It's basically ice cream") and his favorite pepper-intensive wheatgrass shot. It goes down like a dose of battery acid. "That'll add years to your life," he assures me.

We're on our way to Shangri-La studios in Malibu, founded by the Band back in the 1970s, now owned by Rick Rubin. It's where Harry made some of the upcoming album, and as we walk in, he grins at the memory. "Ah, yes," he says. "Did a lot of mushrooms in here."

Psychedelics have started to play a key role in his creative process. "We'd do mushrooms, lie down on the grass, and listen to Paul McCartney's Ram in the sunshine," he says. "We'd just turn the speakers into the yard." The chocolate edibles were kept in the studio fridge, right next to the blender. "You'd hear the blender going, and think, 'So we're all having frozen margaritas at 10 a.m. this morning.'" He points to a corner: "This is where I was standing when we were doing mushrooms and I bit off the tip of my tongue. So I was trying to sing with all this blood gushing out of my mouth. So many fond memories, this place."

It's not mere rock-star debauchery - it's emblematic of his new state of mind. You get the feeling this is why he enjoys studios so much. After so many years making One Direction albums while touring, always on the run, he finally gets to take his time and embrace the insanity of it all. "We were here for six weeks in Malibu, without going into the city," he says. "People would bring their dogs and kids. We'd take a break to play cornhole tournaments. Family values!" But it's also the place where he has proudly bled for his art. " Mushrooms and Blood. Now there's an album title."

Some of the engineers come over to catch up on gossip. Harry gestures out the window to the Pacific waves, where the occasional nude revelry might have happened, and where the occasional pair of pants got lost. "There was one night where we'd been partying a bit and ended up going down to the beach and I lost all my stuff, basically," he says. "I lost all my clothes. I lost my wallet. Maybe a month later, somebody found my wallet and mailed it back, anonymously. I guess it just popped out of the sand. But what's sad is, I lost my favorite mustard corduroy flares." A moment of silence is held for the corduroy flares.

Recording in the studio today is Brockhampton, the self-proclaimed "world's greatest boy band." Harry says hi to all the Brockhampton guys, which takes a while since there seem to be a few dozen of them. "We're together all the time," one tells Harry out in the yard. "We see each other all day, every day." He pauses. "You know how it is."

Harry breaks into a dry grin. "Yes, I know how it is."

One Direction made three of this century's biggest and best pop albums in a rush - Midnight Memories, Four and Made in the A.M. Yet they cut those records on tour, ducking into the nearest studio when they had a day off. 1D were a unique mix of five different musical personalities: Harry, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik, and Liam Payne. But the pace took its toll. Malik quit in the middle of a tour, immediately after a show in Hong Kong. The band announced its hiatus in August 2015.

It's traditional for boy-band singers, as they go solo and grow up, to renounce their pop past. Everybody remembers George Michael setting his leather jacket on fire, or Sting quitting the Police to make jazz records. This isn't really Harry Styles' mentality. "I know it's the thing that always happens. When somebody gets out of a band, they go, 'That wasn't me. I was held back.' But it was me. And I don't feel like I was held back at all. It was so much fun. If I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't have done it. It's not like I was tied to a radiator."

Whenever Harry mentions One Direction - never by name, always "the band" or "the band I was in" - he uses the past tense. It is my unpleasant duty to ask: Does he see 1D as over? "I don't know," he says. "I don't think I'd ever say I'd never do it again, because I don't feel that way. If there's a time when we all really want to do it, that's the only time for us to do it, because I don't think it should be about anything else other than the fact that we're all like, 'Hey, this was really fun. We should do this again.' But until that time, I feel like I'm really enjoying making music and experimenting. I enjoy making music this way too much to see myself doing a full switch, to go back and do that again. Because I also think if we went back to doing things the same way, it wouldn't be the same, anyway."

When the band stopped, did he take those friendships with him? "Yeah, I think so," he says. "Definitely. Because above all else, we're the people who went through that. We're always going to have that, even if we're not the closest. And the fact is, just because you're in a band with someone doesn't mean you have to be best friends. That's not always how it works. Just because Fleetwood Mac fight, that doesn't mean they're not amazing. I think even in the disagreements, there's always a mutual respect for each other - we did this really cool thing together, and we'll always have that. It's too important to me to ever be like, 'Oh, that's done.' But if it happens, it will happen for the right reasons."

If the intensity of the Harry fandom ever seems mysterious to you, there's a live clip you might want to investigate, from the summer of 2018. Just search the phrase "Tina, she's gay." In San Jose, on one of the final nights of his tour, Harry spots a fan with a homemade sign: "I'm Gonna Come Out to My Parents Because of You!" He asks the fan her name (she says it's Grace) and her mother's name (Tina). He asks the audience for silence because he has an important announcement to make: "Tina! She's gaaaaay!" Then he has the entire crowd say it together. Thousands of strangers start yelling "Tina, she's gay," and every one of them clearly means it - it's a heavy moment, definitely not a sound you forget after you hear it. Then Harry sings "What Makes You Beautiful." (Of course, the way things work now, the clip went viral within minutes. So did Grace's photo of Tina giving a loving thumbs-up to her now-out teenage daughter. Grace and Tina attended Harry's next show together.)

Harry likes to cultivate an aura of sexual ambiguity, as overt as the pink polish on his nails. He's dated women throughout his life as a public figure, yet he has consistently refused to put any kind of label on his sexuality. On his first solo tour, he frequently waved the pride, bi, and trans flags, along with the Black Lives Matter flag. In Philly, he waved a rainbow flag he borrowed from a fan up front: "Make America Gay Again." One of the live fan favorites: "Medicine," a guitar jam that sounds a bit like the Grateful Dead circa Europe '72, but with a flamboyantly pansexual hook: "The boys and girls are in/I mess around with them/And I'm OK with it."

He's always had a flair for flourishes like this, since the 1D days. An iconic clip from November 2014: Harry and Liam are on a U.K. chat show. The host asks the oldest boy-band fan-bait question in the book: What do they look for in a date? "Female," Liam quips. "That's a good trait." Harry shrugs. "Not that important." Liam is taken aback. The host is in shock. On tour in the U.S. that year, he wore a Michael Sam football jersey, in support of the first openly gay player drafted by an NFL team. He's blown up previously unknown queer artists like King Princess and Muna.

What do those flags onstage mean to him? "I want to make people feel comfortable being whatever they want to be," he says. "Maybe at a show you can have a moment of knowing that you're not alone. I'm aware that as a white male, I don't go through the same things as a lot of the people that come to the shows. I can't claim that I know what it's like, because I don't. So I'm not trying to say, 'I understand what it's like.' I'm just trying to make people feel included and seen."

On tour, he had an End Gun Violence sticker on his guitar; he added a Black Lives Matter sticker, as well as the flag. "It's not about me trying to champion the cause, because I'm not the person to do that," he says. "It's just about not ignoring it, I guess. I was a little nervous to do that because the last thing I wanted was for it to feel like I was saying, 'Look at me! I'm the good guy!' I didn't want anyone who was really involved in the movement to think, 'What the fuck do you know?' But then when I did it, I realized people got it. Everyone in that room is on the same page and everyone knows what I stand for. I'm not saying I understand how it feels. I'm just trying to say, 'I see you.'"

At one of his earliest solo shows, in Stockholm, he announced, "If you are black, if you are white, if you are gay, if you are straight, if you are transgender - whoever you are, whoever you want to be, I support you. I love every single one of you." "It's a room full of accepting people.... If you're someone who feels like an outsider, you're not always in a big crowd like that," he says. "It's not about, 'Oh, I get what it's like,' because I don't. For example, I go walking at night before bed most of the time. I was talking about that with a female friend and she said, 'Do you feel safe doing that?' And I do. But when I walk, I'm more aware that I feel OK to walk at night, and some of my friends wouldn't. I'm not saying I know what it feels like to go through that. It's just being aware."

'Man cannot live by coffee alone," Harry says. "But he will give it a damn good try." He sips his iced Americano - not his first today, or his last. He's back behind the wheel, on a mission to yet another studio - but this time for actual work. Today it's string overdubs. Harry is dressed in Gucci from head to toe, except for one item of clothing: a ratty Seventies rock T-shirt he proudly scavenged from a vintage shop. It says "Commander Quaalude."

On the drive over, he puts on the jazz pianist Bill Evans - "Peace Piece," from 1959, which is the wake-up tone on his phone. He just got into jazz during a long sojourn in Japan. He likes to find places to hide out and be anonymous: For his first album, he decamped to Jamaica. Over the past year, he spent months roaming Japan.

In February, he spent his 25th birthday sitting by himself in a Tokyo cafe, reading Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. "I love Murakami," he says. "He's one of my favorites. Reading didn't really used to be my thing. I had such a short attention span. But I was dating someone who gave me some books; I felt like I had to read them because she'd think I was a dummy if I didn't read them."

A friend gave him Murakami's Norwegian Wood. "It was the first book, maybe ever, where all I wanted to do all day was read this," he says. "I had a very Murakami birthday because I ended up staying in Tokyo on my own. I had grilled fish and miso soup for breakfast, then I went to this cafe. I sat and drank tea and read for five hours."

In the studio, he's overseeing the string quartet. He has the engineers play T. Rex's "Cosmic Dancer" for them, to illustrate the vibe he's going for. You can see he enjoys being on this side of the glass, sitting at the Neve board, giving his instructions to the musicians. After a few run-throughs, he presses the intercom button to say, "Yeah, it's pretty T. Rex. Best damn strings I ever heard." He buzzes again to add, "And you're all wonderful people."

He's curated his own weird enclave of kindred spirits to collaborate with, like producers Jeff Bhasker and Tyler Johnson. His guitarist Mitch Rowland was working at an L.A. pizza shop when Harry met him. They started writing songs for the debut; Rowland didn't quit his job until two weeks into the sessions. One of his closest collaborators is also one of his best friends: Tom Hull, a.k.a. Kid Harpoon, a longtime cohort of Florence and the Machine. Hull is an effusive Brit with a heart-on-sleeve personality. Harry calls him "my emotional rock." Hull calls him "Gary."

Hull was the one who talked him into taking a course on Transcendental Meditation at David Lynch's institute - beginning each day with 20 minutes of silence, which doesn't always come naturally to either of them. "He's got this wise-beyond-his-years timelessness about him," Hull says. "That's why he went on a whole emotional exploration with these songs." He's 12 years older, with a wife and kids in Scotland, and talks about Harry like an irreverent but doting big brother.

Last year, Harry was in the gossip columns dating the French model Camille Rowe; they split up last summer after a year together. "He went through this breakup that had a big impact on him," Hull says. "I turned up on Day One in the studio, and I had these really nice slippers on. His ex-girlfriend that he was really cut up about, she gave them to me as a present - she bought slippers for my whole family. We're still close friends with her. I thought, 'I like these slippers. Can I wear them - is that weird?'

"So I turn up at Shangri-La the first day and literally within the first half-hour, he looks at me and says, 'Where'd you get those slippers? They're nice.' I had to say, 'Oh, um, your ex-girlfriend got them for me.' He said, ' Whaaaat? How could you wear those?' He had a whole emotional journey about her, this whole relationship. But I kept saying, 'The best way of dealing with it is to put it in these songs you're writing.'"

True to his code of gallant discretion, Harry doesn't say her name at any point. But he admits the songs are coming from personal heartbreak. "It's not like I've ever sat and done an interview and said, 'So I was in a relationship, and this is what happened,'" he says. "Because, for me, music is where I let that cross over. It's the only place, strangely, where it feels right to let that cross over."

The new songs are certainly charged with pain. "The stars didn't align for them to be a forever thing," Hull says. "But I told him that famous Iggy Pop quote where he says, 'I only ever date women who are going to fuck me up, because that's where the songs are.' I said, 'You're 24, 25 years old, you're in the eligible-bachelor category. Just date amazing women, or men, or whatever, who are going to fuck you up, and explore and have an adventure and let it affect you and write songs about it.'"

His band is full of indie rockers who've gotten swept up in Hurricane Harry. Before becoming his iconic drum goddess, Sarah Jones played in New Young Pony Club, a London band fondly remembered by a few dozen of us. Rowland and Jones barely knew anything about One Direction before they met Harry - the first time they heard "Story of My Life" was when he asked them to play it. Their conversation is full of references to Big Star or Guided by Voices or the Nils Lofgren guitar solo in Neil Young's "Speakin' Out." This is a band full of shameless rock geeks, untainted by industry professionalism.

In the studio, while making the album, Harry kept watching a vintage Bowie clip on his phone - a late-Nineties TV interview I'd never seen. As he plays it for me, he recites along - he's got the rap memorized. "Never play to the gallery," Bowie advises. "Never work for other people in what you do." For Harry, this was an inspiring pep talk - a reminder not to play it safe. As Bowie says, "If you feel safe in the area that you're working in, you're not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you are capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don't feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you're just about in the right place to do something exciting."

He got so obsessive about Joni Mitchell and her 1971 classic Blue, he went on a quest. "I was in a big Joni hole," he says. "I kept hearing the dulcimer all over Blue. So I tracked down the lady who built Joni's dulcimers in the Sixties." He found her living in Culver City. "She said, 'Come and see me,'" Hull says. "We turn up at her house and he said, 'How do you even play a dulcimer?' She gave us a lesson. Then she got a bongo and we were all jamming with these big Cheshire Cat grins." She built the dulcimer Harry plays on the new album. "Joni Mitchell and Van Morrison, those are my two favorites," he says. " Blue and Astral Weeks are just the ultimate in terms of songwriting. Melody-wise, they're in their own lane."

He's always been the type to go overboard with his fanboy enthusiasms, ever since he was a kid and got his mind blown by "In Tokyo I used to go to a vinyl bar, but the bartender didn't have Wings records. So I brought him Pulp Fiction. "I watched it when I was probably too young," he admits. "But when I was 13, I saved up money from my paper route to buy a 'Bad Motherfucker' wallet. Just a stupid white kid in the English countryside with that wallet." While in Japan, he got obsessively into Paul McCartney and Wings, especially London Town and Back to the Egg. Back to the Egg. 'Arrow Through Me,' that was the song I had to hear every day when I was in Japan."

He credits meditation for helping to loosen him up. "I was such a skeptic going in," he says. "But I think meditation has helped with worrying about the future less, and the past less. I feel like I take a lot more in-things that used to pass by me because I was always rushing around. It's part of being more open and talking with friends. It's not always the easiest to go in a room and say, 'I made a mistake and it made me feel like this, and then I cried a bunch.' But that moment where you really let yourself be in that zone of being vulnerable, you reach this feeling of openness. That's when you feel like, 'Oh, I'm fucking living, man.'"

After quite a few hours of recording the string quartet, a bottle of Casamigos tequila is opened. Commander Quaalude pours the drinks, then decides what the song needs now is a gaggle of nonsingers bellowing the chorus. "Muppet vocals" is how he describes it. He drags everyone in sight to crowd around the mics. Between takes, he wanders over to the piano to play Harry Nilsson's "Gotta Get Up." One of the choir members, creative director Molly Hawkins, is the friend who gave him the Murakami novel. "I think every man should read Norwegian Wood, " she says. "Harry's the only man I've given it to who actually read it."

It's been a hard day's night in the studio, but after hours, everyone heads to a dive bar on the other side of town to see Rowland play a gig. He's sitting in with a local bar band, playing bass. Harry drives around looking for the place, taking in the sights of downtown L.A. ("Only a city as narcissistic as L.A. would have a street called Los Angeles Street," he says.) He strolls in and leans against the bar in the back of the room. It's an older crowd, and nobody here has any clue who he is. He's entirely comfortable lurking incognito in a dim gin joint. After the gig, as the band toasts with PBRs, an old guy in a ball cap strolls over and gives Rowland a proud bear hug. It's his boss from the pizza shop.

In the wee hours, Harry drives down a deserted Sunset Boulevard, his favorite time of night to explore the city streets, arguing over which is the best Steely Dan album. He insists that Can't Buy a Thrill is better than Countdown to Ecstasy (wrongly), and seals his case by turning it up and belting "Midnight Cruiser" with truly appalling gusto. Tonight Hollywood is full of bright lights, glitzy clubs, red carpets, but the prettiest pop star in town is behind the wheel, singing along with every note of the sax solo from "Dirty Work."

A few days later, on the other side of the world: Harry's pad in London is lavish, yet very much a young single dude's lair. Over here: a wall-size framed Sex Pistols album cover. Over there: a vinyl copy of Stevie Nicks' The Other Side of the Mirror, casually resting on the floor. He's having a cup of tea with his mum, Anne, the spitting image of her son, all grace and poise. "We're off to the pub," he tells her. "We're going to talk some shop." She smiles sweetly. "Talk some shit, probably," says Anne.

We head off to his local, sloshing through the rain. He's wearing a Spice World hoodie and savoring the soggy London-osity of the day. "Ah, Londres!" he says grandly. "I missed this place." He wants to sit at a table outside, even though it's pouring, and we chat away the afternoon over a pot of mint tea and a massive plate of fish and chips. When I ask for toast, the waitress brings out a loaf of bread roughly the size of a wheelbarrow. "Welcome to England," Harry says.

He's always had a fervent female fandom, and, admirably, he's never felt a need to pretend he doesn't love it that way. "They're the most honest - especially if you're talking about teenage girls, but older as well," he says. "They have that bullshit detector. You want honest people as your audience. We're so past that dumb outdated narrative of 'Oh, these people are girls, so they don't know what they're talking about.' They're the ones who know what they're talking about. They're the people who listen obsessively. They fucking own this shit. They're running it."

He doesn't have the uptightness some people have about sexual politics, or about identifying as a feminist. "I think ultimately feminism is thinking that men and women should be equal, right? People think that if you say 'I'm a feminist,' it means you think men should burn in hell and women should trample on their necks. No, you think women should be equal. That doesn't feel like a crazy thing to me. I grew up with my mum and my sister - when you grow up around women, your female influence is just bigger. Of course men and women should be equal. I don't want a lot of credit for being a feminist. It's pretty simple. I think the ideals of feminism are pretty straightforward."

His audience has a reputation for ferocity, and the reputation is totally justified. At last summer's show at Madison Square Garden, the floor was wobbling during "Kiwi" - I've been seeing shows there since the 1980s, but I'd never seen that happen before. (The only other time? His second night.) His bandmates admit they feared for their lives, but Harry relished it. "To me, the greatest thing about the tour was that the room became the show," he says. "It's not just me." He sips his tea. "I'm just a boy, standing in front of a room, asking them to bear with him."

That evening, Fleetwood Mac take the stage in London - a sold-out homecoming gig at Wembley Stadium, the last U.K. show of their tour. Needless to say, their most devoted fan is in the house. Harry has brought a date: his mother, her first Fleetwood Mac show. He's also with his big sister Gemma, bandmates Rowland and Jones, a couple of friends.

He's in hyperactive-host mode, buzzing around his cozy VIP box, making sure everyone's champagne glass is topped off at all times. As soon as the show begins, Harry's up on his feet, singing along ("Tell me, tell me liiiiies!") and cracking jokes. You can tell he feels free - as if his radar is telling him there aren't snoopers or paparazzi watching. (He's correct. This is a rare public appearance where nobody spots him and no photos leak online.) It's family night. His friend Mick Fleetwood wilds out on the drum solo. "Imagine being that cool," Gemma says.

Midway through the show, Harry's demeanor suddenly changes. He gets uncharacteristically solemn and quiet, sitting down by himself and focusing intently on the stage. It's the first time all night he's taken a seat. He's in a different zone than he was in a few minutes ago. But he's seen many Fleetwood Mac shows, and he knows where they are in the set. It's time for "Landslide." He sits with his chin in hand, his eyes zeroing in on Stevie Nicks. As usual, she introduces her most famous song with the story of how she wrote it when she was just a lass of 27.

But Stevie has something else she wants to share. She tells the stadium crowd, "I'd like to dedicate this to my little muse, Harry Styles, who brought his mother tonight. Her name is Anne. And I think you did a really good job raising Harry, Anne. Because he's really a gentleman, sweet and talented, and, boy, that appeals to me. So all of you, this is for you."

As Stevie starts to sing "Landslide" - "I've been afraid of changing, because I built my life around youuuu " - Anne walks over to where Harry sits. She crouches down behind him, reaches her arms around him tightly. Neither of them says a word. They listen together and hold each other close to the very end of the song. Everybody in Wembley is singing along with Stevie, but these two are in a world of their own.

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Riding shotgun with the former boy-band hero as he opens up about sex, psychedelics, and becoming a 21st-century rock star

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Andrea Gibson, Poet, Writer, Activist, Author, Performer - Andrea's New Book "You Better Be Lightning" Available Now

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Andrea Gibson is one of the most celebrated poets and performers of the last two decades. Andrea Gibson's trademark honesty and vulnerability are on full display in their new book "You Better Be Lightning", welcoming and inviting readers to be just as they are. Known as AndrewGibby on some

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I recently retired after 28 years at Oak Park and River Forest High School (OPRFHS), just west of Chicago. I began in 1994 as a traditional English teacher. In 2003, after a two-year stint of developing poetry programs in the lowest-performing boroughs in England, I returned to OPRFHS in a new self-created role: spoken word educator. The role entails pushing into every section of ninth-grade English for a five-day poetry unit each semester-a poetry café unit in the first semester, a slam unit in the second semester, and every section of sophomore English for one five-day poetry slam unit. On the final day of the unit, students share one original poem written during the week. For the in-class poetry slams, students vote anonymously for who they think would best represent the class, and their English teacher, my assistant, and I choose the class champ out of their top three. We then hold semifinals during the school day where the head of the English division and alumni are guest judges (scores are never publicly shown). The top 12 to 14 poets then get to perform in a classwide, in-school field trip where the superintendent, alumni, and visiting poets serve as judges and guest performers. This is tier one of the Oak Park Model, and arguably the most important one. Tier two is our after-school Spoken Word Club, which puts on three evening showcases a year for sold-out audiences. We "recruit" for the club during our class units, and anyone who is willing to commit to being a supportive part of a team is welcome to join. Tier three is our slam team that competes in the Chicago-area slam (formerly called Louder Than a Bomb). There are tryouts for the 6 to 8 slots on the team.

Student voice and pride are at the heart of our model. The in-class cafés and slams develop class community and give teachers the opportunity to gain new insights about their students and often to recognize untapped potential in some of them.

One of the magical elements of the Oak Park Model is that it plays the long game: it doesn't self-select based on who already likes poetry but helps students discover that something they perhaps initially hate can become transformative. Sometimes it even takes a couple of years. One story that comes to mind is of a recalcitrant student-we'll call him Joey-who had a pretty severe speech impediment. He was an angry, sulky, sullen kid who would mutter under his breath and huff and puff if asked to put his head up. He was one of a rare group who couldn't be cajoled into participating. Joey's ninth-grade English teacher took me aside and told me not to push-in his experience, Joey was beyond motivating and would sabotage the class. Given the kid's speech impediment, it was easy to be sympathetic, even as he stewed.

The following school year, my assistant and I arrived early for the first day of our sophomore slam unit. Joey was the first kid to arrive and as soon as he saw us, he shouted, "Sh#t! I'm not doing this sh#t!" He stomped in and put his head down on the desk. By that Wednesday, I caught him furiously writing. I quietly asked him if I could check out what he had written. He glared at me, but handed me the paper. It was a rant of sorts, mainly about how his dad had abandoned his family. My heart ached for the kid and there were legitimate poetic moments that I was able to compliment him on. The next day, he called me over to read his new piece, and it was even more well-crafted. On that Friday, not only did he get up to read for the slam, but he was class runner-up. The next week, he showed up at Spoken Word Club and stuck with it for the rest of his high school career. He'd even ask to come to speak with ninth-grade classes about his unlikely journey to becoming a poet. Joey was one of many students who eventually came around to the value of poetry.

To celebrate the impact on student voice of twenty years of our Spoken Word Club, we released an anthology of student and alumni poems called Respect the Mic: Celebrating Twenty Years of Poetry at a Chicagoland High School (Penguin Young Readers). In its honor, we've teamed with Denison University and Penguin Young Readers to launch a free competition for students and teachers that connects to the anthology. Respect the Mic coeditor Hanif Abdurraqib will be the final judge for the student poetry competition, and NCTE past president Carol Jago will be the final judge for the teacher lesson plan competition. There is a total of $3,000 in prize money. Full details can be found here, and the deadline is October 20
It is the policy of NCTE in all publications, including the Literacy & NCTE blog, to provide a forum for the open discussion of ideas concerning the content and the teaching of English and the language arts. Publicity accorded to any particular point of view does not imply endorsement by the Executive Committee, the Board of Directors, the staff, or the membership at large, except in announcements of policy, where such endorsement is clearly specified.
A former Chicago social worker, Peter Kahn was an English teacher from 1994 and a Spoken Word Educator from 2003 at Oak Park/River Forest High School until his retirement in June of 2022. His former students can be seen in Louder Than a Bomb and America to Me. A founding member of the London poetry collective Malika's Kitchen, he cofounded the London Teenage Poetry Slam and, as a visiting fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London, created the Spoken Word Education Training Programme. He earned his MA in English education from The Ohio State University, student-taught at Columbus East High School, and taught for the Young Scholars Program. Peter was a featured speaker at the National Council of Teachers of English's annual convention and runner-up in the NCTE and Penguin Random House Maya Angelou Teacher Award for Poetry. Along with Patricia Smith and Ravi Shankar, he edited The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks, reviewed in the New York Times by Claudia Rankine. Along with Hanif Abdurraqib, Franny Choi, and former student Dan "Sully" Sullivan, he edited Respect the Mic: Celebrating 20 Years of Poetry from a Chicagoland High School, deemed "electric and expansive" by Kirkus Reviews. Peter's 2020 poetry collection, Little Kings, has poems featured in the Guardian and The Forward Book of Poetry.

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I recently retired after 28 years at Oak Park and River Forest High School (OPRFHS), just west of Chicago. I began in 1994 as a traditional English teacher. In 2003, after a two-year stint of developing poetry programs in the lowest-performing boroughs in England, I returned to OPRFHS in a new self-created role: spoken word educator.

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These Top Hollywood Agents Are Signing All the Influencers (Published 2020)

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TikTok stars aren’t going to Hollywood for film and TV careers. Being influential is the whole business.

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"trey kennedy vine" "vine star" "funny vines" "trey kennedy comedy" sketch skit "sketch comedy" "comedy skit" "hilarious vine" "trey kennedy instagram" "trey...

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Hey y'all! Welcome to my channel where I am basically just really extra. Thanks for checking it out! You can expect sketches by yours truly as a result of too much free time -- let's have some fun! Business Inquiries: trey@treykennedy.com

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Dear Hank & John: About | WNYC Studios | Podcasts

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Hosts John and Hank Green answer listener questions and offer dubious advice.

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On the Media: Segments | WNYC Studios | Podcasts

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WNYC's weekly investigation into how the media shapes our worldview.

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Drake - Laugh Now Cry Later (Official Music Video) ft. Lil Durk

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NBA YoungBoy - Hi Haters (official video)

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A high school spoken-word club changed students’ lives. Now, you can read their poems

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Poets Hanif Abdurraqib, Franny Choi, Dan “Sully” Sullivan, and club founder Peter Kahn have curated a new anthology celebrating the legacy of a Chicago-area high school’s spoken word club.

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Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

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Kindness - Before you know what kindness really is

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The on-field collapse of Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin on Jan. 2 has produced a wave of uplifting public responses - not only thoughts and prayers for the player and solicitude for his family but millions of dollars in contributions to his charity toy drive.

It also has provoked a wave of responses not so refreshing: utterly unfounded conjecture that his collapse had something to do with the COVID-19 vaccines.

Before proceeding to scrutinize this surge of ignorance, let's set forth what learned and legitimate medical experts are thinking.
MORE: MORE: MORE: What we know about the 'kraken' COVID variant XBB.1.5 and why it's causing concern York City names new medical director amid season of flu and COVID infections New flu, COVID cases start to wane but health officials say it's too early to spot a trend
Although the actual cause of Hamlin's collapse after a violent tackle hasn't been established, the experts have focused on a phenomenon known as commotio cordis, in which a sharp blow to the chest, delivered at the right moment, can cause arrhythmia, or a potentially fatal irregular heartbeat.

Doctors have concluded that Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest on the field, which may have been due to some other condition. But there are absolutely no indications that Hamlin's condition had anything to do with a COVID-19 vaccination, or even whether he was vaccinated.

Nevertheless, the anti-vax crowd piled in. Quick off the mark was right-wing blowhard Charlie Kirk, who tweeted, "This is a tragic and all too familiar sight right now: Athletes dropping suddenly."

For those not steeped in anti-vax talking points, this was a clear reference to an emerging narrative in that community that the COVID-19 vaccines have led to legions of young and apparently healthy individuals, especially athletes, dropping dead for no reason except that they supposedly were recently vaccinated. There's even a video titled "Died Suddenly" making its rounds in the fever swamp.

Drew Pinsky, whose medical career has traced a trajectory from respected physician to individual who plays one on TV, weighed in with a similar tweet: "So disturbing. Another athlete who dropped suddenly."

To serious medical authorities who have been following the anti-vaccination movement, none of this has been surprising.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been politicized by partisan ideologues from the very outset, starting with Donald Trump aides at the State Department exploiting the groundless hypothesis that the virus originated in a Chinese laboratory to gain geopolitical advantage over that country. (In a sad development, the respected journalistic institution ProPublica has been willing to squander its credibility by promoting the theory.)

Trump and other Republicans ( I'm looking at you, Ron DeSantis) have been jostling each other to push increasingly loony conspiracy theories about the virus and the pandemic.

They've vilified public officials who have devoted their careers to protecting Americans from disease, not least Anthony Fauci, the recently retired director of the National Academy of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. They've campaigned against anti-pandemic policies from mask wearing to vaccination mandates. American lives have been hanging in the balance, but that hasn't stopped them.

Pseudoscience debunkers have had to work overtime to keep track of all the conspiracy theories and push back where they can. None is surprised that the anti-vaccine lobby jumped into the pool.

"With the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines two years ago, those of us who knew the antivaccine movement predicted that anti-vaxxers would weaponize every death that occurred within even a month of vaccines because that's what they did," wrote David Gorski, a veteran debunker, after Hamlin's injury. "We were, of course, correct, as claims of a 'vaccine holocaust' were on full display within weeks to a few months after the mass vaccination program really got underway two years ago."

He adds, "To anti-vaxxers, it's always about the vaccines. It's always been about the vaccines. It always will be about the vaccines."

The context is critically important here. The COVID-19 vaccines have saved lives and preserved the health of millions of infected people. The Commonwealth Fund has estimated that from December 2020 through November 2022, the vaccines "prevented more than 18.5 million additional hospitalizations and 3.2 million additional deaths. Without vaccination, there would have been nearly 120 million more COVID-19 infections."

Beyond bogus: Under the circumstances, it will be useful to examine the "died suddenly" claim and see how hopelessly threadbare the evidence is for it. As it happens - also unsurprisingly - Tucker Carlson of Fox News is right here to provide us with the opportunity to refute a groundless claim.

Carlson went on the air Jan. 3, the very day after Hamlin's injury, with a report headlined "Why is there a rise in young athletes with heart issues?"

This was a classic case of putting the cart before the horse, since there is no validated evidence for "a rise in young athletes with heart issues."

The star of Carlson's segment was Peter McCullough, a noted anti-vaxxer who has questioned the safety of COVID-19 vaccines and advised pregnant women and recovered COVID-19 patients not to take them - advice that runs counter to that of the medical establishment.

Carlson introduced McCullough as the co-author of an "actual study" that "looked into" the so-called trend of cardiac deaths among athletes in European sports leagues. He said that McCullough found that since the COVID-19 vaccination campaign began, "there've been more than 1,500 total cardiac arrests in those leagues, and two-thirds of those were fatal."

A few things about Carlson's assertions. His reference was to a letter to the editor that McCullough and Panagis Polykretis, an "independent researcher" from Florence, Italy, published on Dec. 22 in the Scandinavian Journal of Immunology. It isn't a peer-reviewed paper.

They didn't "look into" the trend, at least not to the extent of compiling their own data and parsing it to validate the cases. Their letter to the journal states that "from January 2021 to the time of writing, 1,598 athletes suffered cardiac arrest, 1,101 of which with deadly outcome."

Their source was a post on a blog called Good Sciencing, the proprietors of which identify themselves as "a small team of investigators, news editors, journalists, and truth seekers ... who are discovering pieces of information that we can investigate. It doesn't really matter who we are."

The post did not say that 1,598 athletes suffered cardiac arrest, including 1,100 who died. Nor are its figures limited to "European sports leagues" or even active athletes. It appears to have swept up news snippets not only from Europe, but also the U.S., Canada, Africa and Asia.

Rather, it's a collection of unverified media reports "of mainly young athletes who had major medical issues in 2021/2022 after receiving one or more COVID vaccines."

The list, which may have been augmented since it was cited by McCullough and Polykretis, is now up to 1,616 cases, including 1,114 deaths. The connections to COVID-19 vaccinations are largely unsubstantiated. Nor do all the citations involve cardiac arrest. Nor do all the cases involve young persons.

The post includes suicides, drug overdoses and at least one epileptic seizure.

Only about 500 of the citations mention cardiac issues or cardiac arrest. At least 45 mention cancer or tumors. Fewer than 400 bear any mention of vaccines or vaccination at all, sometimes merely to mention that the victim urged other people to receive the vaccine.
- Michael Hiltzik is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times.
As for their ostensible youth, more than 500 of the citations were about people who were 40 or older. Among those on the list is baseball legend Hank Aaron, who died at the age of 86.

Quite obviously, as a measure of post-vaccination cardiac cases this is beyond bogus and not fit to prove anything, contrary to the claims of McCullough, Polykretis and Carlson. On the other side is the work of credible sources such as the Commonwealth Fund, an established health care grant-making organization that doesn't hide its identity or those of its principals behind the assertion that "it doesn't really matter who we are."

In sum, the anti-vaxxers have jumped on the Hamlin injury to promote a thoroughly dubious cause for alarm, pointing the finger at COVID-19 vaccines in a way that stokes public fears and undermines public confidence in a proven treatment for a deadly disease. Shameful.

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The Damar Hamlin injury provokes a wave of ignorant anti-vaccine propaganda

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The on-field collapse of Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin on Jan. 2 has produced a wave of uplifting public responses - not only thoughts and prayers for the player and solicitude for his family but millions of dollars in contributions to his charity toy drive.

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This book is loaded with fun multimodal texts to mimic!

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This book is loaded with fun multimodal texts to mimic!

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Students mimic Six Things you should know... articles like this one

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Students mimic Six Things you should know... articles like this one

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On the first day of preseason volleyball practice last year, Sydel Curry dislocated her knee cap. And with that, Elon's promising freshman setter was out for the year, using her redshirt season to rehabilitate her knee.

She returned in 2015 and had a solid season for the D1 Phoenix, and looks to be a key future building block for Elon. She comes from some of the very best sports DNA imaginable -- her dad, Dell, was a longtime NBA pro, and her mom, Sonya, played volleyball at Virginia Tech. Brother Seth played hoops at Duke.

Also, you may have heard of Steph Curry? He's Sydel Curry's older brother. Plays for the Golden State Warriors. He might win the NBA MVP this year.

As the Warriors gear up for a title run, his sister offered a new window into Stephen, as she refers to him.

1. Stephen can be a real goofball.

He is super goofy. Whenever I had friends over as a kid, he was always messing with us or playing little jokes on us, being really silly. Sometimes he'd hide in my closet and make little noises and try to scare us. Remember the movie "Scream?" We used to have a mask and he'd sometimes pop out of nowhere with it on and scare us. I think he was 14 at the time. He hasn't grown out of his goofy side. He's the funniest person I know. I don't see him as much as I used to, but I hear from his wife, Ayesha, about him doing really crazy things. Now that he has a daughter, he'll be just as goofy with her. He'll roll around the floor with her literally like he's 6 years old.

2. There have been, um, some cheating allegations.

Steph, Seth and my dad are super competitive. Seth was always like, 'Mom, Stephen's cheating.' Stephen would respond, like a really innocent kid, 'No I'm not. Seth is lying.' It was pretty funny, because as the older brother, Stephen was super sweet. But Seth was always saying he was cheating, because he hated to lose. So they'd go back and forth about that. Stephen was quiet but super competitive, and he wouldn't get in your face about it -- the same way he is now.

3. One of the "Splash Brothers" loves "The Princess Diaries" (Hint: It's not Klay Thompson).

As kids, we were huge movie fans. Even to this day, we'll hear a song and we're like, "Oh my gosh, what movie?" and we'll go back and forth naming whatever movie or song the line came from. Same with lines from movies. I was a huge fan of "The Princess Diaries" and would watch it literally every day. He'd watch it with me, so he kind of knows the words to that. "A Walk to Remember" is one of my favorites, and we've gone back and forth on Twitter, spitting out lines. People were like, "Oh my gosh, Stephen likes 'A Walk to Remember,'" and I was like, "Nope, it's because of me." He liked really goofy movies, too, like "Major Payne," "The Mask" and "The Master of Disguise." He likes to think that he can sound like the characters from those movies. From "The Master of Disguise," he'll say, "Am I not turtley enough for the turtle club?"

4. He gets pretty excited before games.

Stephen looks calm, but he can get hyped up. A good example of that: In high school, Stephen and his team were in the locker room getting super hyped before a Christmas tournament game, jumping up and down, trying to get into it. The next thing I know, Stephen's in the back getting stitches right before the game starts. He jumped so high that he hit his forehead and busted it open.

5. He loves numbers, and not just his stat line.

Stephen is really, really smart, especially in math. He used to say he wanted to be one of the people from that show "Numb3rs." We always joked about his birthday, March 14, being Pi Day, and he had a phase where he was really into Sudoku.

6. He's the kindest killer on the court.

You'd never know Stephen might be the NBA's MVP. That's the biggest thing I love about him -- he has not changed from when he was 6 years old to now, as a 27-year-old. He has such a kind heart and works hard for everything he has, and continues to work. If I randomly FaceTime him and he doesn't answer, he'll always FaceTime me back. For me, right now being in college and away from all my family, being literally on opposite coasts from him, that's the kind of thing that I value the most from him.

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On the first day of preseason volleyball practice last year, Sydel Curry dislocated her knee cap. And with that, Elon's promising freshman setter was out for the year, using her redshirt season to rehabilitate her knee. She returned in 2015 and had a solid season for the D1 Phoenix, and looks to be a key future building block for Elon.

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Students tell stories through images with few if any words. The next several posts are mentors for that. 

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Students tell stories through images with few if any words. The next several posts are mentors for that. 

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When the pandemic hit mid-March, I challenged myself to create adventures from entirely within my apartment. It quickly went from personal project to international news. Who knew?

Our Great Indoors

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When the pandemic hit mid-March, I challenged myself to create adventures from entirely within my apartment. It quickly went from personal project to international news. Who knew? Our Great Indoors

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My students have come up with cool ideas that then serve as mentor texts for other students

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My students have come up with cool ideas that then serve as mentor texts for other students

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Sometimes I pull mentor sentences from what I read and use them to study craft moves with something like setting

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Sometimes I pull mentor sentences from what I read and use them to study craft moves with something like setting

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I am a huge poetry fan, so I love to snag poems like this one as mentor texts. 

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I am a huge poetry fan, so I love to snag poems like this one as mentor texts. 

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https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1WcuAI38R9cpbxJu4SrkW9aO_HLq_COaIPCwZ5H2n0aI/edit?usp=sharing

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Allison Marchetti is coauthor - with Rebekah O'Dell - of Writing with Mentors and Beyond Literary Analysis. Their popular blog Moving Writers focuses on writing instruction in middle and high school classrooms with an emphasis on voice and authenticity. Traveling the country to work with teachers and students provides constant inspiration as they help educators do the hard-and-transformative work of teaching real writing. Allison has taught middle and high school English in both public and independent schools in Richmond, Virginia. Her favorite moments in the classroom happen at students' desks, thinking and reading and writing beside them. Grades: 6 - 12

For many years as the author of bestselling Heinemann books such as About the Authors, Study Driven, Already Ready, and In Pictures and In Words, and as a member of Heinemann's Professional Development Services, Katie Wood Ray gave teachers resources and PD that transformed writing instruction and helped children discover a lifelong love of writing. In 2014, Katie "moved to the other side of the desk" and joined the dynamic team of editors at Heinemann where she works closely with authors to craft powerful professional books on a range of literacy topics. Katie is also the series editor for the new Classroom Essentials books from Heinemann. Tasked with bringing foundational, progressive practices to a new generation of teachers, Katie works to ensure that the sharp focus and enhanced design of each book best serve the content. She also teamed up with her longtime collaborator, Lisa Cleaveland, to write one of the first books in the series, A Teacher's Guide to Getting Started with Beginning Writers. You can find her on Twitter at @KatieWoodRay.

Rebekah O'Dell is coauthor - with Allison Marchetti - of Writing with Mentors and Beyond Literary Analysis. Their popular blog Moving Writers focuses on writing instruction in middle and high school classrooms with an emphasis on voice and authenticity. Traveling the country to work with teachers and students provides constant inspiration as they help educators do the hard-and-transformative work of teaching real writing. After more than a decade in the high school classroom, Rebekah currently teaches middle school English in Richmond, Virginia. She has experience using the reading and writing workshop model to transform student engagement at all levels, from inclusion classrooms to the International Baccalaureate program. Grades: 6 - 12

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Using mentor texts from a range of high-interest sources and diverse authors can be a real game changer in secondary writing classrooms. Students learn to read like writers, deepening their understanding of quality writing and inspiring them in their own drafting and revision.

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about

After "The Entombment" by Raphael

The night my father died, I sat on a stool
at the Buckhorn, gazing
out the window's cool counter seat.
Like a funhouse mirror, you appeared.
I have a familiar-looking face; my father used to say-
his wish for me to blend in.
Late after an argument, I fled
and was found bound to a prairie fence
after eighteen hours.
My body is like a sock in the wind
in a field just a mile from here.
My face blooms, velvety
and light like a lamb's ear,

frozen with blood; down
my neck, it goes. A medley of ants shuffles
away. My body is rich with the sour smell
of urine on my head like a crown of daffodils. stachys byzantina; my ears

Copyright © 2023 by Ruben Quesada. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 27, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.

One does such work as one will not,
And well each knows the right;
Though the white storm howls, or the sun is hot,
The black must serve the white.
And it's, oh, for the white man's softening flesh,
While the black man's muscles grow!
Well I know which grows the mightier,

O, rich young lord, thou ridest by
With looks of high disdain;
It chafes me not thy title high,
Thy blood of oldest strain.
The lady riding at thy side
Is but in name thy promised bride.
Ride on, young lord, ride on!

I'm in my room writing
speaking in myself
& I hear you
move down the hallway
to water your plants

I write truth on the page
I strike the word over & over
yet I worry you'll pour too much water on the plants
& the water will overflow onto the books
ruining them

If I can't speak out of myself
how can I tell you I don't care about the plants?
how can I tell you I don't care if the books get wet?

I have folded my sorrows into the mantle of summer night,
Assigning each brief storm its allotted space in time,
Quietly pursuing catastrophic histories buried in my eyes.
And yes, the world is not some unplayed Cosmic Game,
And the sun is still ninety-three million miles from me,
And in the imaginary forest, the shingled hippo becomes the gray unicorn.
No, my traffic is not with addled keepers of yesterday's disasters,
Seekers of manifest disembowelment on shafts of yesterday's pains.

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Home The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets.

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Writer's Almanac Archives - Garrison Keillor

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To subscribe to the daily Writer's Almanac email, click here >>> To listen to archived episodes of The Writer's Almanac from before 2017, click here >>> * * * * * This is a free, daily program produced by the same small media company that brought you A Prairie Home Companion.