Teacher Talk

At the end of my final day as a fourth-grade teacher, I stood in my empty classroom and sobbed. The official line was that I was leaving teaching midway through my fifth year so that I could [...]

With the election season just finishing up, it feels like all we see, hear, and talk about is politics. Looking ahead, it will be another contested presidential battle in 2024.  We know as [...]

My writing career grew out of 14 years in the classroom as an English and reading teacher in the public schools of Pagosa Springs and Durango, Colorado. My career choice owed a lot to an [...]

Like many middle school students, I was required to read S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders. I hate to admit it now, but I hardly gave it a chance before I labeled it as a number of things that didn’t [...]

My parents were the first people in my life who sparked a love for books and reading. My dad read to me when I was a child, and my mom would take me and my sister to the library regularly, [...]

As a child of the ‘90s, I grew up in the wild Wild West of the internet. It was not until I was in middle school when the internet became available to me to use at my “leisure” (on a hard-wired [...]

I have often wondered how I discovered the writer in me at the age of 40. In my wildest dreams, I never imagined being a writer. But here I am, a published author and a teacher of writing. We are [...]

As we enter the back-to-school season, many educators are gearing up for the return of students. This time of the year can be very exciting, as well as nerve-wracking, for educators and students [...]