iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

As Meyer points out, saving time isn’t always a good thing. If we are using AI to help students save time while writing and to help teachers save time giving grades/feedback, why not just save all the time by not assigning writing at all?

210 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Please listen to teachers. Underdeveloped frontal lobes are not capable of using AI to automate tasks they’ve already learned. All they do is hand off assignments to AI. They ask AI to serve as a search engine, reader, writer, and teacher. We are raising a generation that will not be able to think.

030 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

I almost took a baseball bat to the copy machine today, à la Office Space. And we use Papercut, so you get logged out within a minute and can’t see your jobs/what’s left/any info. 🤬

000 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

What a time to be an English teacher. My seniors just finished The Handmaid’s Tale and today we begin Parable of the Sower.

160 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

As an OG elder Swiftie this is wild and amazing. (Why yes, I did start a free trial of YouTube Premium so I could watch this ad free on my TV).

030 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

I saw John Proctor is the Villain for the second time yesterday. I can not stress enough how incredible this production is. I cried again, and my friends who were seeing it for the first time were stunned by the production. You have until Sept 7 to see this show. It should be mandatory viewing.

030 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

#CopaAméricaFemenina Tell me you are watching this game without telling me.

000 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

For high school teachers: penguinrandomhousesecondaryeducation.com/wp-content/u...

033 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

For middle school teachers: penguinrandomhousesecondaryeducation.com/wp-content/u...

131 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

For elementary teachers: penguinrandomhouseelementaryeducation.com/wp-content/u...

121 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

Big day today! A male magnolia warbler stopped by the yard! #wildlifecontainerpond

010 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

Ahh! New backyard bird at the #wildlifecontainerpond A female Black-throated blue warbler!

130 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

Heaven forbid a teacher share an award-winning book recommended for 7-10 year olds with 3rd graders. This is why no one wants to be a teacher anymore.

011 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

NJ Parents’ rights groups trying to stir up controversy around The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. 🤯🤔🫠🙄

New Jersey Project - News
1d • &
3RD GR Teacher in Scotch Plains Fanwood read "The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane." which contains heart wrenching deaths and suicidal ideation. She didn't notifiy parents that she was covering such a heavy topic even though she was given a warning about the book. Thoughts?

112 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

Finished up The Tempest and now it’s time for more book clubs!!

230 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

Every time I tell teachers about it, I find myself describing the myriad of ways it might be used in interdisciplinary units in grades 6-12. It truly spans the entire age range + there’s so much it brings to a unit centered on nature/the environment.

000 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

Thrilled to be a judge for the Green Earth Book Award YA fiction category! This year’s YA fiction winner is Force of Nature, an incredible verse novel that introduces readers to Rachel Carson + her work.

120 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

Great way to end the week! A visit to the Drama Book Shop and Smash on Broadway’

020 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

Anyway, if you want bring climate change learning into your class, I wrote some teaching guides that can help! HS: penguinrandomhousesecondaryeducation.com/wp-content/u... MS: penguinrandomhousesecondaryeducation.com/wp-content/u... Elem: penguinrandomhouseelementaryeducation.com/wp-content/u...

Screenshot of cover of middle school guide

Screenshot of cover of high school guide

Screenshot of cover of elementary school guide

121 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

The federal government cut $4 million from climate change research at Princeton University, blaming it for causing “climate anxiety for America’s youth.” Guess what? Kids care about the environment. They care about climate change. This is ridiculous. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/09/c...

Trump Administration Cuts Research Funding, Claiming It Creates ‘Climate Anxiety’
The cuts to a Princeton University program come as the Trump administration has been reviewing an array of research grants related to global warming.

In pulling funding for the program, the Commerce Department said that the collaboration “promotes exaggerated and implausible climate threats, contributing to a phenomenon known as ‘climate anxiety,’ which has increased significantly among America’s youth.” The agency also said it would stop funding the program’s educational initiatives targeted at students in kindergarten through high school students.

251 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

Severance is filmed at Bell Works (formerly Bell Labs) by my house, and this weekend Apple did a pop-up exhibit!

3171 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

Then things really go off the rails. “They will see that forsaking the ordinary duties of marriage and parenthood to "find oneself" and live as an "expressive individual" is chasing a mirage”. I’m sorry, what now? We should force kids to read classics so they abide by traditional gender roles? 😬🚩

This feast of the imagination will teach children to have a realistic sense of what truly is possible in this life and wherein lie life's boundaries. They will see goodness and beauty, evil and ugliness for what they are. They will see that forsaking the ordinary duties of marriage and parenthood to "find oneself" and live as an "expressive individual" is chasing a mirage
. They will learn this from the misery that romantic escapism brought Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary.

110 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

Unsurprisingly, the examples Finley lists are white and often problematic in 2025. What about diverse voices? Contemporary classics?

Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Farmer Boy" shows children that in this life, reward comes after long, hard work. Frances Hodgson Burnett's "The Secret Garden" illustrates what resilience looks like. C.S. Lewis's "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" portrays the good and evil that lurk within each one of us. Greek myths teach children proportion. Robert Louis Stevenson introduces children to beauty in lyrical form.
Classical music gives them the best that can be offered to the ear.

100 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

Then we start to diverge. This was an immediate 🚩. I’m not sure how many young people Finley regularly spends time with outside of her own children, whom she homeschools, but I’ve taught many deeply religious students. Many families have deep-rooted cultural, religious, and/or familial traditions.

Without religious beliefs, traditions or standards to connect them with permanent things, young people feel tremendous anxiety about who they are and how they should find meaning. They have read no good literature or history that would furnish their imaginations with examples of heroism, or even ordinary men and women overcoming the ordinary challenges of life. They have seen no movies that illustrate real beauty, heard no music that draws them upward, and seen no art that stirs in them a sense of the transcendent. For them, modernity is-to borrow a term from T.S. Eliot— a wasteland.

100 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

Finley and I also agree that technology and parenting aren’t the only causes of many of the problems teachers see in the classroom today. We also agree that kids need more time alone with their imaginations!

Technology addiction and parental coddling aren't the causes of mental-health problems in young people, but rather symptoms.
The real problem is the romantic corruption of imagination. Imagination is far more powerful than logic or reason. It colors our entire view of life and life's possibilities. A well-formed imagination- one properly adjusted to reality-can adapt to life's vicissitudes and see life steady and see it whole.

100 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

The project has evolved a bit over the years, but for the last few years we’ve had the kids add a message on the bookplate they place in the book. It forms a tangible connection between past and present classes. 💕

Sample bookplates with student name, graduating class, and a short message to future students who pick up this book.

100 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

Here are some photos of the senior legacy bookshelf. This is about 6 years of the project.

Bookshelf with a variety of student- chosen books.

100 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

Senior book project selections are arriving! Each senior chooses a book they think will fill a gap in the curriculum. Our amazing PFA purchases a copy, the students read and analyze the book, and then the students design a unit! They then leave the book as a tangible piece of their legacy here.

2100 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

The segment on monarch butterflies!! In 2008 I received a fellowship that afforded me the opportunity to visit the oyamel forests in Michoacán. It was breathtaking.

020 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Donahue goes on to say, “…we need to challenge students with language and characters that may not come to them immediately but might with healthy discipline.” This is true! But we also know that dragging kids through books results in fake reading, not lifelong readers.

an ascension. While we still have the institutions of school and class time as well as the books that line our walls, we need to challenge students with language and characters that may not come to them immediately but might with healthy discipline.

1110 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

So let’s dig in. I don’t think any high school English teacher would disagree with the claims of paragraph. However, I don’t think it’s dramatic to lay some of the blame for students’ struggles at the feet of social media/cell phones. Even adults struggle to focus and read for sustained periods.

It's easy to join the hand-wringing chorus, blaming TikTok's corn drill challenge, Jake Paul and their ilk for the diminuendo of Dickens. But we cannot let reading become another bygone practice. In their more than eight hours of screen time a day, on average, students navigate a galaxy of mediated experiences; schools need to be a bastion of the analog experience of the physical book.

1110 0

Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

Me handing out “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” knowing that next week I’ll share “The Ones Who Stay and Fight” and maybe “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole?”