diverse literature | Teacher's Workshop

The Best Engagement Strategy: Scaffolding and Guided Notes

It feels like it’s getting harder and harder to keep the attention of our students. Every teacher knows that if a student doesn’t use ...

5 Poems to Start the Year

I love to start the year with a month of poetry. The unit gives students the time to read the first novel independently and it functions ..

History and Literature

It is the objective of many novels to bring history back to life. The history in textbooks focus on the powerful, the decision makers.

4 Easy Ways to Talk About Race in School

Some of the most challenging questions I’ve faced in my career have to do with race and culture.

How to Make Fiction Relevant

To wrap up my unit on Things Fall Apart, I’m doing what I believe Chinua Achebe would have wanted....

Where to Find Real Stories on the Web

We’re finishing up a unit on Exit West by Mohsin Hamid this week so I’m asking my students to listen to a personal narrative of choice....

LGBTQ+ Literature: Opening Up Language

About five years ago, I read an article by a high school student about the way to create a LGBTQ+ inclusive curriculum...

Bite-sized Prose, Buffet Conversations

Because distributing books has been a challenge this year, some of my students have been reading novels on their computer. From the...

Rethinking Research

I attended the virtual NCTE conference this past Friday and it got me thinking about the research paper, or really, rethinking it. Part...

Language and Power

As an English teacher, I’m always thinking about the power of language. But recently, I’ve been thinking about language and power. How...

Teaching Race Relations

My daughter got it, but explaining the concept of culture and our history of race relations to teenagers is not easy, especially when there’

Practical Professional Development for
General Education and ELA Teachers