A Must-Read New Blog: Sean’s “Slam Teaching”

Wednesday, 5 December 2007 Clay Burell Print This Post

I’m back from the Apple Distinguished Educator Asia Institute, but that can wait. This is more exciting.

I don’t know Sean, the writer behind Slam Teaching, one whit. I hope that changes soon. His blog has only two posts on it, but it’s refreshingly absent the tools-obsession and buzzwords (though he does teach online, apparently – so it’s not like he couldn’t echo about these if he chose).

Instead, Sean writes about teaching and education from the bone, as something closer to what we might call a “spiritual” practice. But instead of paraphrasing, his “What is Slam Teaching?” sidebar text says it better than I could, so here it is:

What is Slam Teaching?

The idea behind Slam Teaching is not unlike the idea behind slam poetry. Teaching, this blog posits, is an extemporaneous, aggressive, lyric, funny thing to do. It’s a way of expressing oneself; it is art, and it is unpredictable. This blog will work (slowly, progressively) toward a better understanding of teaching as this dynamic force – an animated performance rather than a set of skills that react with criteria for learning.

If any of you rubric junkies are cringing out there, I hope that’s a good thing. (Rubrics make me cringe quite frequently, though they often seem a necessary evil.)

Check him out. Pump him up. We need more blogs like his.

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The entry 'A Must-Read New Blog: Sean’s “Slam Teaching”' was posted on December 5th, 2007 at 11:06 pm and is filed under blogging, creativity, language arts, professional development, school reform, teaching, writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “A Must-Read New Blog: Sean’s “Slam Teaching””

diane writes:
No. 1 — December 6th, 2007 at 9:40 am
I don’t know about “aggressive” but with no curriculum (or budget!), my Current Events class is frequently “extemporaneous” and “unpredictable”.

I do sometimes feel like I’m performing, but, hey – it keeps the boys awake.

Heading over to Slam Teaching to check this kid out.

Thanks for the tip, Clay.

Reply
Sean writes:
No. 2 — December 6th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
Clay,
Thank you for your very kind enthusiasm for my little project. I hope you and everyone continue to enjoy what I put up there. Should be fun!
Best,
Sean

Reply
Clay Burell writes:
No. 3 — December 6th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Sean, no thanks necessary. See you in my Bloglines.

Reply
Learning to Learn for Learning instead of Grading | Beyond School writes:
No. 4 — January 26th, 2008 at 9:37 am
[...] last December, I posted my excitement about Sean Law’s new blog, Slam Teaching. Three weeks later, after many rounds of commenting on each others’ posts, we somehow went [...]