I’ve been an ELA teacher for 10+ years, ranging from 6th grade all the way through college. While my heart lies in the middle grade world, I currently teach high school as well as pre-service teachers at a local university. I think my ideal day would be teaching a bit of all ages, but I love being in my high school classroom where I teach mostly seniors.
We spend our days talking about books, writing creativity, and occasionally I curl up in the Gryffindor Common Room-inspired corner of my classroom during my prep. While I’ve taught a variety of levels, right now I teach our English IV section which focuses on genre, perspective, and young adult literature. In addition to that, I teach two creative writing sections for 10th-12th graders that I developed. The first course is more of a intro to writing styles such as nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, while the second explores speculative fiction, screenplays, graphic novels, picture books and more. And the book nerd in me is thrilled that I also get to teach a science-fiction & fantasy literature course that I developed. We explore fantasy literature and archetypes in the fall and then dive into science-fiction in the spring.
My teaching philosophy is centered on my love of reading and writing: I’m a reader and writer first, teacher second, so I bring those passions into my classroom. I approach daily learning with creative, student-centered work in a workshop style approach.
While I don’t share a lot of my teaching life online (because there’s only so much I can do in a day!) I do have a Teachers Pay Teachers store, Lost in Stories where I’m starting to share some of my curriculum.
Sometimes I talk about teaching on Instagram where I mostly recommend books for students and the classroom, but I also share some teaching things in my monthly newsletter, Lost in Story: Notes from a Writer’s Desk. I often send out downloadable content that I create not only for readers, but for use in the classroom as well (because I often do use it in my classroom!)
Finally, if you want to know more about my teaching style, check out the Spark Creativity Podcast Episode 196 where I talked about my unit on Verse Novel Book Clubs! (I share some handouts and book list suggestions in the blog post as well!)
