X-Men’s Apocalypse is Right

X-Men: Apocalypse opened this summer, the latest installment in a famous comic turned film franchise. Although I have not seen the film, anyone familiar with the titular villain knows that the premise follows his character’s legacy: A nearly invincible and all-powerful mutant wishes to destroy the world of humans (and weak mutants) and create a world meant only for the strongest.
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Using Glogster in the Classroom

Today I’m featuring samples of work done on Glogster, a free web tool you can use to create a digital collage. As a teacher, I find that tools like this one help students to learn to use digital interfaces to create simple, artistic projects that demonstrate their understanding of a subject while adding variety to assessment.
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I’m A Featured Poet at Contemporary American Voices!

I am happy to announce that the poetry website Contemporary American Voices has selected me as their featured poet for May 2016!

Three of my poems appear:

Pilgrim

Contours

Happy Hour

Along with my work, poetry of my brother, Lukas Guard, and an old schoolmate, Allison Boyd, also appears.

“My Bad”

I know the the first time I heard the phrase “my bad” I was playing basketball at church camp. I was about eleven or twelve. It was me and this older kid. We were just shooting around. I take a shot, it goes in, and he goes for it after it bounces back toward me. He takes his shot, misses, and then realizes he didn’t give me my change.

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English Teachers of My Youth: Mr. Campbell

That final year of high school, we all died. We were going to face that shadow guard to our IB certificate (or diploma), that infamous man, Mr. Campbell.
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English Teachers of My Youth: Mr. Bolte

11th grade: Mr. Bolte.

Junior year began the actual IB classes, incredibly rigorous examinations of difficult literature. We had to think more critically than ever before. Some of my friends were full IB, all 4 core classes plus like 2 or 3 extra being IB level. I would have died. And because I was not full IB, I felt the pressure to display my intelligence to my peers. But I also still wanted to be a goofball.

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