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Students finish reading a chapter and ask: "What does it mean?" or "What's the right interpretation?" Many students see literary analysis as guessing what the teacher is thinking. The problem wasn't that my students couldn't think deeply. They didn't yet have a framework for asking productive questions. Like many teachers, I started with existing critical theory resources. They were academically accurate, but I found they didn't give high school students enough guidance or help them understand why the lenses mattered in the first place.

I'm excited to announce that I will be presenting at NCTE's upcoming annual convention on November 19-22 in Philadelphia. I will share details about when and where you can find my presentations once I have them. Session 1: GSEA's Roundtable—Innovate & Illuminate: Expanding Queer and Trans Possibilities in English Education My part of the session is called "From Erasure to Imagination: Teaching LGBTQIA+ History Through Literacy and Joy." It will focus on how I revised a unit on LGBTQIA+ literature and history in my cross-curricular Social Justice course to center resistance and joy.

One of the biggest challenges of teaching Never Let Me Go isn't helping students understand the plot. The plot is fairly straightforward. Students tend to have more difficulty understanding how to read the novel. Many students approach the book as if it were a mystery. They spend the first half asking, "What's really going on?" and become frustrated by the unanswered questions.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Black educator, baseball player, and civil rights activist Octavius V. Catto was murdered by a white supremacist on election day.

Some experts worry that less homework could be a problem for math achievement, at a time when test scores nationwide are already at a dismal low.

This is the point in the year when AP teachers look at the calendar and panic a little, particularly if our students are still freezing when they see the prompt or defaulting to formulaic, shallow essays. We teach students five-paragraph essays and encourage them to hunt for devices, which leads students to focus on what they should include rather than what they should argue.

One of the most disheartening moments in teaching is asking a question, seeing a hand go up, and hearing, “Can I go to the bathroom?” We’ve all experienced discussions that fall flat—questions met with silence or, just as often, the same few students carrying the conversation while everyone else listens. Even when those students have insightful things to say, discussion can start to feel less like inquiry and more like performance.

Amazon.com: Poetry Pauses: Teaching With Poems to Elevate Student Writing in All Genres (Corwin Literacy): 9781071889022: Vogelsinger, Brett: Books

I first heard about TPCASTT from Lisa Huff and shared the resource on my blog 15 years ago. It works really well for giving students a starting place for analyzing poetry. It helped me solve a problem I was having when teaching poetry: how do students start analyzing poetry? I'm still using TPCASTT in my classroom all these years later.

Believe it or not, Mrs. Dalloway might be one of my favorite books to teach. It definitely presents many challenges. It doesn't divide neatly into chapters. It's non-linear. It's written in a stream of consciousness. Students struggle with it. Honestly, many teachers struggle with it! Common approaches, such as teaching the traditional plot arc (Freytag's Pyramid) or teaching character development, simply don't work with…

That's right! You can order your favorite Girl Scout Cookies from me online, all while helping my troop and I do great things in our community and beyond! Check it out.

The pushback against ICE exposed a series of mistaken assumptions.

The nonprofit Trevor Project received a $45 million gift from billionaire MacKenzie Scott at the end of 2025.

Wilfrid Laurier University Press - Transforming Ideas