A teacher helping teachers...

For those of you out there that are educators, I know your life is hectic and even more so now with changes happening in education due to COVID-19. As a middle school teacher myself for the past 27 years, I also know that creating a new or supplemental curriculum, even in the best times can be incredibly time consuming, from where to start, how much to include, coming up with comprehensive questions at various levels, developing projects, making rubrics, and more. The list can go on and on. 

On this site, under the Author Visits/Resources tab, I have included a full novel study for my first book, Going Green. My hope is that you can use this curriculum in an easy, efficient manner. It has been used for the past several years in middle schools and high schools both. Feel free to change/edit the items in any way that makes sense to you. Use as much or as little as you like. Download the book from my webpage in any form you need it (eBook, Mobi, or PDF). Pass it on to your students or have them download it from my site as well. Assign it as reading, with the worksheets and/or projects, give the test if you’d like - whatever works for you. (By the way, contact me at [email protected] for the worksheet and test answer keys, or a copy of the full curriculum guide with the keys included in one document.)

When you finish, I’d love to meet virtually with you and your kids through Zoom. We can do it as many times as you need. I’m here for you. Teachers have to help teachers, and authors have to help kids. I can do both, so I will.

I had the privilege of hearing Richard Pack speak a few years ago. He said that today’s YA writers are writing the survival guides for tomorrow’s world. I believe that every novel a person reads should lead them to thinking about their own life, the choices they’ve made or may make. We all should be able to take something away from a good story to tuck away for a time when we need it. That might be today, or tomorrow, or years from now. Going Green is a story about choices and consequences, about true happiness and real fear, about racism and appreciation of differences, and about deciding who you truly are and what you believe. Set in the future, it allows us to look at and talk about "their problems" …until we realize how just similar our realities are.

One last thing, keep checking back. I am currently working on an assignment/project that looks at viruses and how they mutate, comparing COVID-19 to the PKPH virus in Going Green. When it is complete, I’ll post it here as well.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions or anything you’d like to discuss. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.