Blog
Why Mastering Strong Paragraph Writing Is Crucial For Essay Writing
Why is it important to understand, apply, and master strong paragraph writing before moving on to essay writing? Practically anyone can put together a paragraph of 5 sentences. But is it constructed properly? Do your sentences flow to form a well thought out paragraph...
Windows and Doors: Discover the Value of Learning a Foreign Language
Learning a second language can open unexpected doors in a person’s life. As is often the case for many school subjects, students ask why it is worth their time and effort to study the material. There are subjects that have obvious and immediate applications in the...
You Don’t Have to Agree with Your Teacher (And Other Secrets for Analyzing Literature)
The first secret of literary analysis is that you don’t have to agree with your teacher. Yep, I said it. While some people try to fit literature into tidy boxes, genres, and purposes, my favorite high school English teachers and college professors encouraged...
How Can Studying Psychology Help Me TODAY?
Why study psychology? I get asked this question a lot. After 20 years of creatively trying to inspire the asker of the question to see how amazing and far-reaching experience in the field of psychology can be, I have some pretty nifty answers. Do you ever have contact...
Need A COVID-Friendly Fun Family Activity?
Are you and your children tired of being stuck inside because of COVID? Is everyone tired of the same old thing? Well, here’s something fun you can do to get everyone excited about getting outdoors again. Go geocaching! What’s Geocaching, you ask? Geocaching is a fun...
The Power of Poetry to Improve Writing
“Poetry is a window, a way to see inside” (H. Wallace 1). When we study poetry, we discern our inner world and speak into the outer world words that shape history. We follow in the footsteps of master poets who teach us how to play with words to evoke deep emotion,...
The Book vs. the Movie: More Than Meets the Eye
Which is better: Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling or Haydn’s oratorio The Creation? While you might prefer one over the other, it’s unfair to declare one as “better” because they are completely different art forms. How many times have...
Does This Sentence Even Go Here? A Language Teacher’s Guide to Polishing Paragraphs and Essays
As a teacher of both English and French over the years, I have often been reading a student’s writing and suddenly asked myself, “Does this sentence even go here?” And quite often, upon further inspection, the answer has been “no.” The truth is, this is a question...
Anti-Climactic Abeka: Why Reading Acclaimed Literature is Superior to Curriculum-Based Readers
It was my first year teaching at a private Christian school in the DC suburbs. I was excited, optimistic, naïve, and had no idea what I was doing. Like many teachers, I had no choice in the materials I used, and I was quickly disappointed as I looked over the...
Are You Stressed? Five Tips to De-Stress Right Now
Let’s face it; times are tough right now. Just about everything in our world feels turned upside down thanks to COVID. Many of us have lost our regular sources of social support as we find our in-person co-ops or other classes, sports teams, prayer groups, mom’s...
Women Who Wrote the World: The Importance of the Female Voice in the Study of Literature
If you’ve ever taken a traditional English/literature class, you may have noticed that many of the authors you read (particularly if the class moved in any sort of sequential order) were white males. While there are many wonderful and worthy works of literature...
What is the “No Religious Test” Clause of the Constitution and Why is it Important?
Religious liberty is something we take for granted as Americans. Not so long ago I sat in St. Mary’s Cathedral in Aberdeen, Scotland and contemplated the importance of religious liberty to me. I imagined sitting in the cathedral at a time when Catholics were...
