Erin Palazzo

That was my face when I saw Karen Read added one of the former jurors to her legal team for the new trial that starts next week!

Parody of a classic painting in the style of someone like Rembrandt, it reads “snow predicted: oil on canvas” and is a painting of a loaf of bread, gallon of milk, & roll of toilet paper against a dark brown counter and background.

My favorite image for days like that:

Will it eliminate all forms of cheating or work avoidance? No. But it definitely makes an impact. And it teaches them their voices & independent critical thinking matters. And those two things are essential for our democracy!

We’ve got to give the kids agency! Let them write with their own excited voices! Stop “valorizing formal academic English above all else all the time” (#NCTE24).

…to ideas that might work for his type of book specifically, like flashbacks or other organizational choices. Y’all. He was both so shocked & so excited that he could pick a book he wants to read & write about whatever he finds interesting instead of everyone having a single book & narrow focus!

One just got I’m Glad My Mom Died for Christmas & he was unsure “if memoirs would work.” I said how much I loved that book & it was a great choice—talked about different approaches, from traditional like the complexity of her relationship with her mom…

Why choice matters: my sophomores are writing lit analysis essays this month. They pick the book (regular, in verse, or graphic novel), they pick the reading method (paper, ebook, or audiobook—just have a hard copy too for when we start the essay). Kids were 🤯 when they heard all this.

They are good!

The If Books Could Kill podcast did a 2 hour takedown of this book back in August

…4 Shakespeare in 5 years is too many. And unless they take AP Lit, the ONLY other exposure to drama they get is one play jr. year (Crucible, Salesman, Raisin, or Fences). Do Shakespeare really well once or twice & then give Ss a fuller education in the drama genre!

Whatever angle I take—love, tragedy, parent-child conflict, feuds—I can think of other texts that would be richer & I can teach well in half the time. Cutting doesn’t hurt my Ss as they also get Midsummer, 12th Night, & Hamlet or Macbeth in 8, 10, & 12…

We need to stop teaching Romeo & Juliet!

Yes! I’m on my district’s committee to develop an AI policy & I’m bookmarking this & a whole bunch of other wisdom in here to help me speak clearly in what will likely be the dissenting minority

Words we love: Pebbling – a new love language | Blog | Red Setter It’s a word I admit I’ve not really thought of, until in recent weeks it became news that ‘Pebbling’ is the new term for when people share memes and gifs to...

It’s also called pebbling! redsetteragency.com/articles/wor...

Yes! Those are the correct answers! And also a handful of mildliners.

Days like today make me wonder how quickly we could get legislation if a nation’s worth of teachers went on strike…

When teachers complain about not having enough planning time, most are not complaining about having to plan.

They are complaining about not having time because they have too many classes, students, bosses, parents, duties, meetings, and paperwork. This solves the wrong problem.

It also helps inform a bigger conversation over time with Ss about how authors have always been pushing against cultural norms or to track how theater has changed to meet the culture (Greek tragedy v Shakespeare v Fences or Raisin in the Son v Hamilton or Wicked for ex).

(2/2) It’s theater so I firmly believe in watching experts & learning from the production not a painful class reading or as homework. We do close reads of key passages to strategize “How do I understand hard texts?” & then apply that to dense NF articles. But we don’t need 4 plays by him in 8-12!

(1/2) It’s a great way to intro schools of literary criticism & the concept of critical literacy to Ss. I teach 12th Night to 10th. We watch the Globe production staring Rylance & Frye (so good!) & we can look at gender, love, class, etc. easily.

Exchange between two users: one linking CNN article saying most Americans expect Trump to do a good job & the responder pointing out that most Americans read at a sixth grade level (citation included)

And then you run into these exchanges & I feel like I’m back in peak Twitter with all its snarky goodness

Doing English vs. Doing School Parsing differences with the father of English Lit

I read this post by @mraleosays.bsky.social going into this week of school—starting a novel in one class, poetry in another—and has pushed me (in the best of ways) to center "doing English" as much as I possibly can.

This matters a lot.

substack.com/home/post/p-...

I think we're probably underestimating the degree of change that will need to happen in education to deal with the presence of GenAI/LLMs. The studies I've read that show positive efficacy for LLM integration tend to measure that efficacy against what I call "schooling," rather than learning.

Come join the #iteachEnglish 📖 feed!

A hardcover book on a granite countertop. The book is called Pick the Lock by A.S. King. The cover art is a table setting with a miniature old box TV sitting on top of the plate. A piece of birthday cake is on the TV screen and also in the corner of the cover’s image

I have the audio of James plus I picked up AS King’s latest at #NCTE #booksky

Yes (to the best of my ability to type while he talked), from two different parts of the same hour-ish talk.

Brett Vogelsinger presenting with a screen that reads “Poetry can…illuminate, captivate, mystify”

Me and Chanea Bond in a selfie together after one of her presentations

Jessyca Matthews, Scott Bayer, Sawsan Jaber, & Joel Garza in a panel discussion on agency, advocacy, & action

What a crazy time to be alive! For those I saw at #NCTE (too many to tag): I’ve considered you my colleagues, mentors, & friends for so many years & I’m so grateful to finally be able to sit beside you and laugh and learn. I cannot wait to keep learning from and with you!

We ended with Ada Limón’s encouragement: “What I love about poems is that anything is possible in them. Maybe we can make that true for real life too.” My hope for myself, my students, and #NCTE as we leave: May we (I) be challenged to create spaces that are more just, peaceful, good, & free.

Final day of #NCTE ended with great resources for teaching graphic novels alongside their audiobooks & a rich conversation with YA authors on how to see & embrace complex issues with our students through novels.

Good morning on the final day of #NCTE! As @joelrgarza.bsky.social would say, “clouds, man”