You may or may not remember, but a few blog posts ago. I was irate over a column in The Washington Post written by Jay Mathews that had negative things to say about the use of posters. He claimed with some validation, I do feel constrained to admit, that as homework - posters often became more of a project for mom than student.
Imagine my surprise and happiness to read WAPO today and find myself quoted not once, but twice. Wow!
So this confirms two things. I preached to my students and I mean I was fired up and went into character voices and pounded my desk insuring them that writing formal letters of complaint and thanks were the stuff of magic. I told stories of epic written battles with insurance companies and winning. I told of writing lovely thank you notes that paid off with surprising and unexpected extra coupons for free dinners and how thanking interviewers after job interviews had gotten my foot in the door. Having a gift for the courtesies, as they are called in The Game of Thrones, is a terrific, pocket life-skill. (I nick-named skills that students could use throughout their lives to be successful as pocket life-skills. I implied that if they mastered these skills (such as letter writing), they could pull them out of their pocket at will and voila, job done.
Here is the link to the article and yes, I have already e-mailed my letter of thanks to Mr. Mathews - it was a blend of formal and informal because I wanted to have a balance of treating him with respect and yet, not making it "over done".
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/on-parenting/why-i-was-wrong-to-trash-poster-boards/2014/07/14/bb5ecf34-078b-11e4-a0dd-f2b22a257353_story.html
Teach those letter writing skills - your students will be writing you thank you notes some day. :-)
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