Online Community Experience

-I set out to join an online community that would aid myself as an English teacher. At first, I was going to settle on the National Council of Teachers of English(NCTE). However, although they seem to be the McDonalds of the online English teacher's communities, I didn't want to pay $40 to join.

-As an English teacher, I like to develop my lesson plans from scratch in order to buy into the lesson I teach. I've seen lots of English teachers who seem to teach out of a textbook and they have a hard time pitching the students on why they should be doing the lesson besides "you'll be graded on it". At the same time, I do think that you should have some sort of resource to rely on in a pinch if you're stuck and need a lesson or advice fast, and it would be annoying to count on the teacher next door.

-I found a perfect web community at http://www.webenglishteacher.com/contact.html, entitled, "Web English Teacher". Here's a list of the different areas of English-Education that you could get lesson plans from:
AP & IB

Book Reports

Children's Literature

Drama

ELL/ESL/ESOL

Grammar

Home

Interdisciplinary

Journalism

Just for Fun

Literature (Prose)

Media

Mythology

Poetry

Professional Resources

Reading/Literacy

Shakespeare

Speech

Study Guides

Vocabulary

Writing

Young Adult Literature

I like that it's broken down by various subjects that are put into the one subject of English; opposed to being labeled by grade-level.

In one of the forums, I asked how I could incorporate Truman Capote into a high-school American Lit. class without having to go over "In Cold Blood" which probably wouldn't be acceptable for high-school students. This was the response I received:

From EnglishTeacher48- Try Capote’s short story, “A Christmas Memory,” it might be a little late in the year for a Christmas theme but this is a great way to introduce Capote. The style within the story is one that you could have your students try to mimic by having them create their own “Christmas Memory”. There’s a link to a lesson plan using this short story.

This online community and website isn't better than the NCTE by any means, but it is good enough for what I would want.