Sarah Styf is a 19-year high school English teacher currently on a teaching sabbatical. She lives in the Houston area with her husband and two children. She is passionate about education reform and civic engagement and recently started the podcast Lit Think with a former teaching colleague. She can be found on Instagram @sarah.styf and Twitter @sarahstyf. I sought […]
Ask a Teacher
Learn about how to ask a teacher about what really happens in a classroom.
Posted inAsk a Teacher
Building a Teacher Rep-utation
Kevin M. McIntosh’s short stories have appeared in the American Literary Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Potomac Review, Chicago Tribune and have been nominated for Best New American Voices and the Pushcart Prize. He has had fellowships at the Ragdale Foundation and Blue Mountain Center. His novel Class Dismissed (Regal House Publishing, July 2021) is informed […]
Posted inAsk a Teacher
Reading is the Cheat Code: Why Reading Must Have a Place in Schools
Jessica Fitzpatrick is a high school librarian in Houston and is in her eighth year of education. She holds a Bachelor of Science in elementary education from the University of Houston and a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of North Texas. She is the 2020 TLA Branding Award Winner for Community […]
Posted inClassroom Management
8 Tips So Your Substitute Plans Don’t Suck
“I find your lack of substitutes disturbing.” Read that in a Darth Vader voice the next time you have to take off, and you’ll feel exactly the type of difficulty that I mean. It’s been 6 years since I wrote my story about how “Lack of Subs Is the Canary in the Coal Mine,” and […]
Posted inAsk a Teacher
Teach to the Rest: How the Pandemic Could Be the Best Thing for Education in 20 Years
What’s getting you through 2020’s chaos? For me, it’s the knowledge that education could change, and not by a little. As with all things education, I’m not alone of course, And many others have come before me. I know because I used the pandemic to read them all. Reardon and Timar. Ravitch and Tatum, Delpit […]
Posted inCOVID-19
Special Education and Social Distancing- The Struggle All Around
Erin Popper has been a Special Education Teacher in Florida for seven years. She has taught a wide range of disabilities in various classroom settings. She earned her Master’s Degree in Special Education from Florida Gulf Coast University in Ft. Myers, FL. Erin’s extracurricular activities include, but are not limited to, coaching high school swimming, […]
Posted inAsk a Teacher
4 Things Every Teacher Knows About High Stakes Testing
There are lots of things within the context of teaching that teachers will have a variety of opinions on. High-stakes testing is certainly a unifier for many of us. Here are four things that every teacher knows about testing that stakeholders and lawmakers should have listened to pre-pandemic to prevent some of the stress and […]
Posted inTeacher Self Care
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teachers: Habit 3 – First Things First
My friend and former student-teacher called me the other week: “I need to vent to you for 10 minutes.” “We were supposed to get the vaccine once our meetings finished today. I received a text at 12:50p telling me the window for the vaccine was 1p-4p. As I was heading out the door, I received […]