By Debra Schneider, District Literacy Lead and Librarian, Tracy, CA: Students in the Senior Odyssey elective writing class were slowly building community, but a few students were still on the periphery, quiet, not participating in reading their informal journaling aloud to the class. I worried, always,...
By Sarah Fitzgerald, Secondary English, Ruckersville, VA: My focus for the school year was trying to improve student writing, not for state scores, but to help foster self-confidence and enjoyment in writing. I asked students to write for a few minutes on how they viewed themselves...
By Kirsten Foti, 7-8th Grade Reading and Writing, Arlington, TX: After eleven years of teaching, I had the unique opportunity of having a full-time tutor work in my classroom. I sent out an inquiry through Facebook and received a response from one of my first-year students....
By Daniel Yowell, 12th Grade Teacher, Detroit, MI: One teaching experience that has stuck with me through the years was the time that I received an especially meaningful piece of feedback on a year-end reflection written by an eighth-grade student who struggled in many ways, but...
By Pauline Schmidt, Teacher Education, West Chester, PA: I've essentially lived two teacher lives. From 1995–2003, I was a 9th-grade English teacher in a small, rural school district in New York. Somewhere around 2000, I read Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson and immediately put it on...
By Jodie Scales, High School Language Arts, Muncie, IN: I have a student who wrote an introductory letter to me at the beginning of the year explaining that his biggest fear is having to talk or present in front of anyone else, let alone in front...
By Amanda Brewer, Middle School Teacher, Denton, TX: I teach in a suburban school with a mix of kids in it—racially diverse, high-income, low-income, etc. In my fifth year teaching eighth-grade reading, I was lucky to have small classes. One year, I had one class period...
By Rachel McMinn, High School English, Meriden, CT: I am a second career educator. I started off in banking after college, but quickly realized that it was not the career I wanted to pursue for a lifetime. It was a tough decision because I felt fairly...
By Mindi Rench, 3rd Grade Teacher, Northbrook, IL: This year I made a huge professional change. After twenty-two years in a middle school, I made the jump to third grade. I was feeling a bit stagnant, in need of shaking myself up. I knew I didn’t want...
By Caroline Lehman, 7th Grade ELA, Elizabethtown, PA: Teaching is more than instruction. Way more. I thought that I knew what teaching entailed from my undergraduate work and my student teaching, but the sheer amount of decisions and multitasking that a teacher has to do throughout...
By Yolanda Whitted, English, Dallas, TX: The most beautiful moments in my career have always been when I am teaching the students no one believes in. So often, they also don’t believe in themselves. I believe in them primarily because I am them. I see myself...
By Elizabeth Shults, High School English, Birmingham, AL: Stories have always been important to me. I was raised on Bible stories, told over and over again with flannel-backed characters paraded around on flannel board. My dad used to tell my sister and me stories about a...