Blog

I used to tutor “Anand,” an Indian American boy. He’s in college now, but back when he was in second grade, he taught me a valuable...

Many of my elementary school tutoring students also see other tutors. They play musical instruments and participate in organized sports....

Wit. Badinage. Banter. No one expects humor on tests like SAT, AP Literature, or AP Language and Composition because they are big serious...

One of my students, “Sara,” is studying for her AP Language and Composition exam in May, so I wanted to start having her write practice...

When I was writing my book, History According to SAT, I drew on my memories of all the SAT passages I had read since I began teaching SAT...

Recently, I wrote about how to read science passages on SAT and ACT (https://www.historyaccordingtosat.com/post/reading-science-a-formula...

A few days ago, I wrote about my dismay at finding racist language in Jack London’s Call of the Wild after I assigned it to a...

I recently assigned Call of the Wild, Jack London’s 1903 masterpiece, to a sixth grader without having recently reread it. I remembered a...

I teach a number of bilingual students who, as first generation Americans, face additional hurdles in English because the adults in their...

In high school, I struggled to read nonfiction and avoided science whenever possible. Reading a science textbook was like being sucked...

The Gift of Reading Parents often ask me what they can do to encourage their children to read, and my answer is simple: be a reader...

“This year, for the first time since the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests began tracking student achievement in the...