Exploring careers beyond the classroom — What should I do if I don’t want to be a teacher anymore? I typed that phrase into Google somewhere around month three of my first year of teaching. At the time, it seemed like I was the only educator in the world who felt that way. …

In my first year of teaching, I worked in an English department that prided itself on extensive student portfolios. Each class had crates full of folders filled to the brim with student work. The essays within each file followed students from their freshman year of high school to their senior…

Teaching tweens to analyze media with a critical lens — It is no secret that many of us have become addicted to social media. Even as a mostly functioning adult who has seen “The Social Dilemma,” I still have a difficult time tuning out my desire to mindlessly scroll through my feed in an attempt to quench that dopamine hit…

Making student’s work meaningful — Let’s rewind backwards to our days in grade school. Put yourself in any classroom that comes to mind. Where are you sitting? At the front of the room? At the back? Next to a friend? What are you concerned about? Picture the events happening outside of the classroom. Is there…

How digital tools can support academic, personal, and communal growth — Close your eyes and picture the ideal classroom. Are the students diverse? Are they silently writing structured five paragraph essays or are they using 21st century skills to demonstrate learning? How is their teacher supporting their academic and pastoral needs? Are they collaborating? Are they creating? Are they connecting to…

Mentor texts are the keys to creativity and creation — How do babies learn to begin speaking legible words and, eventually, sentences? They copy the sounds they hear from the people around them. How do musicians learn how to compose music? They study the works of great compositions and use those notes to make new ones. Likewise, how do writers…

Multimodality and the power of language — Literacy is no longer as simple as the ability to read a set of words in a given text. In today’s world, the capability to read, write, and comprehend meaning goes beyond the expertise that once defined literacy. The integration of technology into our personal, educational, and professional settings has…

Four platforms that are user-friendly and engaging — In 2020 the pandemic pushed education into an experiment that might not have ever happened without the looming threat of COVID-19. 100% online education. The majority of teachers worked around the clock, unable to escape the jobs they typically brought home anyway, to ensure that students had access to the…

My negotiations with the mind and the body — I am a worrier. Not a warrior, as Spell Check’s squiggly blue line suggests, but a worrier. It’s not the word I’d like to use to describe myself, but it’s the word that captures who I am. …