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Marsha Rogers.  

I have taught English in grades 7-12 in California and Nevada.  I have also taught drama, speech, history, and computer applications.   During 1998-1999 I was encouraged to get my credential certification in the computer applications.  I had been working on computers for several years, taught myself with a lot of help from my friends, word processing, graphics design, and web design.  I had also been mining the web for materials to use in my own classes.  

Things began to come together shortly after I got on the Internet in 1994, or was it 1995?  Time flies when you have fun.  I began to see how the computers could be used in classes to enhance teaching.  That's when I first began to develop the 30 Days of Poetry section of this web.  It was the first web I designed.  The purpose was to make some very successful poetry lessons widely available to colleagues and friends.

Not long after that I began to see how technology could work in classrooms.  Students needed to become actively involved in discovering what was there.  I began to develop lessons that could be accessed through the Internet.   That's when my Fahrenheit 451 lesson plans began to take shape.  Recently I discovered webquests.  That was the direction the Fahrenheit 451 lessons were going.   With a little more direction, they are becoming true webquests that are open ended enough for students to do some serious inquiry and report back to their classes on what they have found.

I have purposely chosen to include lessons on curricular topics that are not easily found on the web.  There isn't much on Steven Crane.   Not much is found on Beowulf.  There is lots available on King Arthur, but it lacks any kind of organization that students can readily use.  I have tried not to duplicate anything that is on the web already.  Remember, my first attempts were because I couldn't find materials for secondary students in English to use.  There is no sense in reinventing the wheel.  That's why there are lots of links on these pages.  There are many excellent sites out there.  Often it's just a matter of locating them.  And the focus of this web is secondary English.

I have taught computer applications at Western Nevada Community College.  I have taught the same courses in  high school.  In the summer of 1999 I picked up and moved to Wisconsin, where I was employed at CESA #3.  I got to do full time what I was working on in my spare time as a teacher.  

My focus continues to be how to integrate technology with curriculum.  Sometimes it seems as though it just can't be done.  But it's not as formidable a task as it seems.  And it's not as scary as it seems.  I didn't get my first computer until I was over 50.  In the last few years I've had a wonderful time exploring.  So can you. 

In my spare time I am a published poet.  In the last two or three years I have about 25 publications in 14 states and two countries.  I still consider myself a member of Ash Canyon Poets in Carson City, Nevada.  That's where my poetry really began to take shape.  I was a founding member of Shadow Canyon Poets in Hawthorne, Nevada.

In the educational/professional area I have been a member of the Nevada State Curriculum team in English/Language Arts.  I worked as an officer and rural chair for the Nevada English/Language Arts Network, the state affiliate of National Council of Teachers of English.  I had been a member of that organization for over 15 years.  I worked with the Mineral County School District Technology team as writer of the curriculum standards of the Technology Plan.

If you want to contact me, feel free to do so.  msrogers@comcast.net.

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