The launch date and party for Beach Pulp, the anthology in which my short story "Moonwalker" appears, have just been announced! I'm very excited for this event and cannot wait to meet, in person, the other writers and artists who have contributed to this project! A big thank you goes out to Nancy Sakaduski, founder... Continue Reading →
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Writing With an Em Dash of Style
Nancy Sakaduski of Cat and Mouse Press sent me a list of edits and revisions for my short story Moonwalker scheduled to appear this spring in the anthology Beach Pulp. She took great care making changes to improve the story’s flow, language, and formatting, like reducing the number of hyphens and phrases offset by em... Continue Reading →
Active Inspiration
The crumpled aluminum fuselage of a WWII era submarine bomber impaled the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts' courtyard. The fifteen-story red brick school, a block from the gothic spires of City Hall, looked down upon the staged tragedy, but not with the horror one would assume. A scattering of students ate breakfasts, drank coffee, and... Continue Reading →
Reaching Into The Storm
There are times when deadlines, the uncertainty of change, an onslaught of communications, and stress converge, descend upon us suddenly making our lives seem chaotic. Sitting in Rehoboth’s Coffee Mill, I wrapped up an email to a young teacher feeling excited yet overwhelmed by the demands of preparing for a new school year. She felt... Continue Reading →
You Should Be Able To Read It Twice
Author Stephen King believes a good book should engage its reader on different levels, so much so the reader will read the book twice. I found a particularly engaging YouTube video of King addressing a Master's Class at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell in 2012. During part of his presentation, he spoke about how the... Continue Reading →
World War II Memorial
This is a transcript of the narration for a short video I put together about the World War II Memorial after visiting Washington, D.C. in June of 2017. Visit my Facebook page if you would like to view the video: www.facebook.com/dcwriting.dcooper/. The National World War II Memorial honors the contributions of over sixteen million members of... Continue Reading →
Validity in Rubric Building: Quantifiers and Qualifiers
A rubric’s validity is a matter of how trustworthy the grades are it generates. Measures are only as good as the tools providing the measurements, and, if a tool is faulty, we cannot trust the numbers it provides. A ruler can tell us a pencil is six inches unless the ruler’s markings are incorrect. The... Continue Reading →
Teaching Writing Style To Middle Schoolers
Proper formatting and the use of citations can be missed easily among all of the mechanical improvements we try to make before releasing our charge to high schools. Teaching students how to create well-formatted final copies, to support claims with quotes and internal citations, and to provide works cited lists can be particularly difficult if not taught... Continue Reading →
Page By Page: Publishing in the Late 1800’s and Early 1900’s
This is the transcript of the audio narration for the previous video. My father, a member of the .918 Printing Club, demonstrated graciously how a platten press from the Industrial Revolution was used to create a page of text. ________________________ We’ve all wanted to take hammers to our desktop printers from time-to-time, smash them to... Continue Reading →
The Five Themes of Geography Races
What is this activity about? These easy-to-prepare races are great tools for reinforcing kinesthetically the Five Themes of Geography. The five themes are “Location,” “Place,” “Human Environment Interaction,” “Region,” and “Movement.” The Association of American Geographers adopted the Five Themes in 1984, and the themes have been used for decades to help students identify and... Continue Reading →
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