Jun 25, 2025
Ken Liu's short story, "The Paper Menagerie," is an easy and powerful add to your curriculum. Not only does it explore family relationships, The American Dream, and identity (themes you can easily connect to other texts as you build units), it introduces - briefly, painfully, powerfully - China's Cultural Revolution.
Jun 18, 2025
It’s a rare curriculum book that inspires NO negative comments. Ever. To hear, month after month, year after year, that a certain book turns kids into readers, ignites interest and discussion in class, hooks unengaged students like nothing else has.
Long Way Down is one such book.
It’s a fast read, a...
Jun 11, 2025
Trevor Noah's Born a Crime is trending, and for good reason. I'm seeing the evidence everywhere.
This spring, as I ran our curriculum book choice tournament across the high school levels and hundreds of teachers weighed in, I watched it soar to the finals in BOTH the 9th/10th category and the 11th/12th category.
Jun 4, 2025
I never met a short story I liked back in high school.
If I was going to read, I wanted to READ.
I wanted to get caught up in the plot, get to know the characters, inhabit the action, spend some time in another world.
I certainly didn't want to finish half an hour after I began. No matter how lovely the language...
May 28, 2025
Last year, at this time, I was preparing to move from Bratislava to California when I released the episode we’re revisiting today, all about the easiest way to approach the last day in ELA. And it turned out to be the most popular episode I’ve ever released, with more than 25,000 teachers tuning in.
So it seems only...