Noah Taxis

English Teacher

Noah Taxis is an English Teacher based in San Francisco, California. He has taught as a credentialed teacher for over four years: first at Mountain View High School as a 9th- and 11th-grade English Teacher, and then at UISA (Ukiah Independent Study Academy) as a Middle School Independent Study Teacher. He is now a high school English teacher at St. Ignatius College Preparatory School in San Francisco, where he also coaches Cross-Country. In addition to his teaching duties, he conducts WASC visits around Northern California as a visiting member.

Education

  • MA, Education, Speciality: English, Secondary, Stanford University
  • MA, Comparative and World Literature; Cinema Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
  • BA, English; International Literary and Visual Studies, Tufts University

Certifications & Organizations

  • California Single-Subject Teaching Credential

Favorite Piece of Advice

Challenge the status quo. We all have something valuable to offer our students and each other.

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Forum Comments (1)

What does it take to be a teacher?
Being a teacher requires immense creativity, and thinking on your feet and decision-making to gain awareness, situational awareness. You can get caught up in demands like reading and working behind the scenes too, but at the end of the day, the most important thing, and the most gratifying thing about teaching is just interacting with students.

You can't plan for those moments. Students come into the room, and they're different every day. And they'll surprise you and say things they didn't expect. And their moods reflect their lives. And sometimes you'll see a kid that you love, and they'll look like they're down and just feeling sort of sympathy for them or checking in with them and giving them an option or an opportunity to share with you. I think it's about relationships. And the more everybody knows that I think the better it is. Kids should know that what's important in a class and education is how much you're communicating with your teacher, and how comfortable you feel with them and say how you feel with them, and how able you can express your voice in the classroom. It is about learning and progress.

Q&A Comments (8)

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Co-authored Articles (22)

What Does Et Al Mean? How to Use It When Citing Sources

English teacher Noah Taxis explains what “et al.” means & how it’s used"Et al." is a convenient way to reference a work with three or more authors without having to spell out all their names. In this article, we'll...

How to

Cite a Research Paper

When writing a paper for a research project, you may need to cite a research paper you used as a reference. The basic information included in your citation will be the same across all styles. However, the format in which...

Is It James' or James's?

Apostrophes can be super pesky to deal with, especially when it comes to plural possessives and words or names like “James” that end in “s.” Is it okay to just add a single apostrophe at the end, or should you ad...

How to

Reference Essays

When you begin writing a research essay, you must take into account the format of your writing and reference pages. There are several reference styles that may be assigned to you, including MLA (Modern Language Associati...

How to Properly to Cite Dialogue in MLA

When you're writing a paper about a work of literature, such as a play or story, you might need to quote from the dialogue. If you're using the citation style of the Modern Language Association (MLA), your Works Cited en...

How to

Do Footnotes

Footnotes are used generally in academic and professional writing to cite sources or add supplemental information to the main text of a paper. Academic citation styles, such as the Modern Language Association (MLA) and t...

How to

Make a Title Page

Title pages are not especially difficult to make, but you need to follow specific guidelines depending on the style guide your professor instructs you to use. The three major style guidelines are American Psychological ...

How to

Cite Multiple Authors

Tips for citing multiple authors in your writingAll of the 4 popular citation styles have slightly different rules for citing multiple authors. In order to reference these sources properly, you’ll need to know how to c...

How to

Cite World Bank Data

The World Bank's global development data are freely available online to researchers. If you're writing a research paper, particularly for an economics or political science class, you may want to make use of these open da...

Citing Treaties in APA, MLA, & Chicago Turabian

Examples and tips to format international legal citations When writing a research paper, particularly in the fields of history, political science, or international law, you may need to cite a treaty as a source. The basi...

How to

Format Footnotes

If you are writing a paper or report using the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS), you'll need footnotes to the text of your paper. These footnotes appear on each page, and may cite a research source, provide additional conte...

A List of 830 Compound Words—Plus, What Even Is a Compound Word?

English teacher Noah Taxis explains what open, closed, and hyphenated compound words are (with examples)Sometimes in the English language, two or more words are combined to create one new word. These are called compound ...

How to

Write an APA Style Paper

APA style can seem intimidating, but it’s mostly a matter of dividing your paper into the right sections and following basic formatting guidelines. Give your paper a strong intro, then follow up with the methods, resul...

How to Cite a Textbook: In-Text Citations & Bibliography References

Quote from any textbook in your academic research paperWhen you use a textbook as a reference in an academic or research paper, your readers should be able to find the information you used. To give readers this informati...

How to

Create a Successful Project (for School)

School projects can come in a variety of forms, and the exact process you'll need to create a successful one will vary from project to project, subject to subject, and class to class. However, some general steps and best...

How to Do a Critical Media Content Analysis

Plus, what to write in each paragraph of your analysisA media analysis reviews a broad swath of news stories on a given subject. Media professionals may use media analysis to decide how to frame a story that they want to...

How to

Cite an Article

Articles in scholarly journals and magazines, both in print and online, are common sources for research papers. Provide an in-text citation every time you paraphrase or quote from the article, and include a full citation...

How to

Teach the Present Continuous

The present continuous, also called the present progressive, is a tense used to talk about things that are happening right now, created using the verb "to be" and a present participle (an action verb ending in "ing"). To...

How to

Use Its and It's

Like most English speakers, you probably confuse "its" with "it's" on occasion. This mistake is easy to make and easy to fix. To eliminate this tic from your writing, just remember that "it's" always means "it is" or "it...

How to

Grade a Paper

Anyone can mark answers right and wrong, but a great teacher can mark up a paper in such a way as to encourage a student who needs it and let good students know they can do better. As the great poet and teacher Taylor Ma...
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