Brimi on Education

Focus

While my academic focus as a teacher has been in the Humanities, I also write articles about the socializing aspects of education and the life of an educator. English teachers have faced a variety of challenges as politicians and other decision-makers have initiated shifts toward standardized curriculum and state testing. For some of our students, basic standards are too limiting, though classmates may need extra attention just to clear the bar. Worse, non-educators have taken the fun out of learning for both groups.

English classrooms should be sanctuaries of discovery and creativity, not dungeons of chores and drudgery. As teachers, we do the students no favors, either, when we focus on their grades, when we grade punitively, and when we value appeasing a supervisor over teaching a child. We need to recognize, too, that what we teach is not simply limited to the content of our academic disciplines. As I ask my students each semester, what should be the outcome of four years in a high school? After all, very few of my students, though they may love The Great Gatsby or Ralph Waldo Emerson, are going to make a living as authors or lecturers. We have to show them the utility of this content. More than anything, this idea of a practical education has driven my work and the writing (click on titles) that you will find below.