Social Emotional Learning Toolkit by Caitlin Miller and Jenna Copper, Ph.D.

Social Emotional Learning Toolkit

by Caitlin Miller and Jenna Copper, Ph.D.

Social emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which children and young adults learn to develop healthy social skills, such as regulate emotions, understand emotions in themselves and others, achieve goals, make good decisions, and develop healthy relationships (CASEL, 2026). Everyone in some way will engage in SEL whether they are doing it on their own or at school. According to the Department of Health & Human Services (2026) approximately half of adolescents will experience a mental health disorder at some point in their lives, and research indicates that emotional dysregulation is linked to adolescent anxiety and depression (Young, Sandman, & Craske, 2019). In other words, adolescents often lack the skills to manage their emotions. Sandell (2020) explains, “Evidence suggests SEL is crucial for excelling in school and in life, as well as increasing success in academic learning” (para. 3). This skill, then, is desperately needed for them to be able to flourish in the academic journey.

At this point you may be asking, “Well, if this is the case, what can we do about it?” Teachers are required to follow academic standards that often neglect social emotional learning. As a preservice teacher studying lesson planning and standards alignment, I’ve often asked myself, Why can’t we add SEL to these standards?

This is the question I decided to explore when I started researching SEL last year. This research idea came to me after watching someone close to me deal with anxiety all through school, as well as myself, and getting limited support due to lack of resources. Teachers often did not have a lot of support in learning and teaching SEL strategies, and I wanted to do research on how to change that moving forward. What I found was that academic standards provide an excellent opportunity to teach SEL in the general education classroom. I specifically noted that literacy standards were particularly connected to SEL skills. Therefore, for my Honors College project, I decided to research ways to use literacy lessons and strategies to incorporate SEL into the general education classroom.

With the support of my Honors Program Project faculty supervisor, I created my SEL Literacy Toolkit that was specifically designed to support pre-service and practicing educators to connect SEL research to real classroom practice. Below is a breakdown of several tools that are included in the toolkit. This was designed for all teachers to be able to to find ways to incorporate SEL into the classroom and allow students to understand it more in their own lives.

For the toolkit, I identified different literacy tools that are relevant to teaching SEL. Each tool has a description of what it is, instructions on how to use it, the research showing it is helpful, the grade level it is for, materials needed, as well as the suggested literacy connection.

1. The first tool is utilizing picture books to introduce and discuss SEL topics (Deliman, 2021). Read alouds in any grade level are a great way for students to see themselves as a character and be able to identify with issues going on in the book to better understand their feelings (Bennett et al., 2025). It allows students to see how people may feel with that emotion on a daily basis which is important so they know how others may feel. It also can open up discussions about ELA themes, such as relationships, social justice, and conflict.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. The next strategy is incorporating SEL vocabulary into traditional ELA word study. Vocabulary study is already embedded in all ELA classrooms; therefore, this can be a great opportunity to teach about different emotions and apply self reflection. Using a word wall to display the SEL vocabulary can create a daily check-in point for students to self-reflect and see how they are feeling without having to directly open up. All words for the vocabulary wall would be different emotions such as, sad, happy, mad, anxious, worried, excited, and other emotions. This can also be something the class works together to come with other emotions.
   
   
   
   
   
3. Small group instruction is typically used for academic remediation and enrichment; additionally, this format provides an excellent opportunity to provide differentiated work based on students’ social and emotional needs (Phillippe, 2021). We have seen how this is important in many ways in a classroom, but directly for SEL, it allows students to open up to their peers, discuss emotions, support their peers with coping skills that they can come up with in a group, and practice listening skills (Phillippe, 2021). It also allows for students to simply just talk about different emotions in a safe space with their teacher.
   
   
4. The final strategy is journaling (Robertson, 2022). Teachers can provide prompts, sentence starters, quotes, or statements related to SEL to support students in their journaling (Robertson, 2022). This type of writing-to-learn strategy can be assigned daily or weekly. To make this streamlined for the classroom, every student should have their own personal journal. If the student feels comfortable they can also hand in the journal to be read by the teacher, or keep it for themselves to reflect on. Additionally, students can incorporate drawing and art to express themselves. 

SEL is an important topic to talk about, especially in the educational setting. Some students may only feel safe to open up to their peers or teachers about how they are feeling. This research provides a safe way to not only teach about SEL but also for students to know that it is okay to have all emotions and that they are allowed and encouraged to talk about them. I feel that this research can help many students. Personally, I plan on using many of the tools in my future classroom everyday. I plan to dedicate a small amount of time every day to a different tool in the toolkit. For example, Wednesday can be journal day, or Thursday is small group day. These are just little ways that I feel can incorporate SEL into my classroom to better support my students. I also will use the vocabulary wall every day for taking attendance. My plan is to have a small box for them to drop in a card with their name and how they feel every morning while also checking in on each and every student. These are small ideas that can make a big impact in each students’ life and create a way for them to safely and effectively develop their SEL.

Author Bios

Caitlin Miller is a junior Early Childhood Education and Special Education at Slippery Rock University. She is an Honors Program Student and currently conducting research on incorporating SEL into literacy lessons.

Jenna Copper, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Education at Slippery Rock University and Caitlin’s Honors Program Project Supervisor.

References

Bennett, S. V., Gunn, A. A., Peterson, B. J., & Bellara, A. P. (2025). “Connecting to themselves and the world”: Engaging young children in read-alouds with social-emotional learning. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 25(3), 777-800.

CASEL (2026). Fundamentals of SEL. https://casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/

Cline, K. (2019). Social emotional learning and literacy in the primary grades: An integrated approach.

Deliman, A. (2021). Picturebooks and critical inquiry: Tools to (re) imagine a more inclusive world. Bookbird: A Journal of International Children's Literature, 59(3), 46-57.

Phillippe, A. (2021). Connecting the dots between academic and social-emotional learning with literacy. Michigan Reading Journal, 53(3), 5.

Robertson, Mackenzie. (2022). Journaling as a Social-Emotional Teaching Practice to Promote Adolescent Mental Health. Bowling Green State University 6-10.

United States Department of Health & Human Services. (2026). Mental health for adolescents. https://opa.hhs.gov/adolescent-health/mental-health-adolescents

 Poems by Teachers about Teaching: WPCTE Celebrates National Poetry Month

To celebrate National Poetry Month 2026, the blog committee put out a call to WPCTE members asking for teacher-composed poems about teaching. Enjoy the fantastic submissions below, and thank you to these amazing teacher-poets for sharing your work and your hearts with us!

Zimmerman Wedding

Teaching high school English means someone always  

asks, “can’t we just watch the movie instead?” 

The bell rings mid-sentence, 

and half the class is out the door in a rush. 

A forgotten pencil. 

Someone chose to not read. 

Someone finished it and has strong opinions. 

We spend twenty minutes arguing 

about why a character lied, 

as if the answer changes anything. 

A hand goes up 

just when the room almost goes quiet. 

My saving grace when conversation stops. 

But, by third period, 

the board is full, 

my coffee is cold, 

and somehow we are discussing 

why words written years ago 

still sound like they belong here. 

by Cassidy Black, Indiana Area Senior High School

Essential

Sometimes when a student asks

why we have to read something,

I am taken aback.

How could such a question

even be asked

when reading is so crucial

to the human experience?

Next, will they ask me

why we have to breathe?

The answers are the same:

because it’s necessary

to survive.

by Amy Bouch, Chartiers Valley Middle School, WPCTE President

First Day, Again

The campus breathes differently in August—

 a faint scent of printer ink and coffee grounds,

 mixed with the green insistence of late-summer grass.

 I know this air.

 I’ve walked through it for decades.

Once, I counted years in syllabi,

 pages in reading lists,

 faces in neat rows that blurred into the next semester’s faces.

 Now I count in smaller things—

 the way the first cough echoes in a quiet lecture hall,

 how one student’s pen taps

 like a metronome before the music begins.

They arrive in waves:

 some cautious, as if the doorway were a border crossing,

 others all elbows and laughter,

 already narrating their own beginnings.

 And I, the steady lighthouse on the shore,

 am here to keep the light turning.

I’ve learned the first weeks are not about what I teach,

 but how I listen—

 to the stammer of someone finding their voice,

 to the stillness that follows a hard question.

 We build the semester together,

 brick by brick,

 word by word,

 until the walls of the room are papered with understanding.

Every year I think I’ve seen it all—

 and every year proves me wrong.

 So I sharpen my chalk,

 open the windows to let in the hum of the quad,

 and take my place once more

 at the start of the story.

by Elizabeth Kuhns-Boyle, Community College of Allegheny County

Those Who Can

“Those who can,” they say, “do,

and those who can’t,” they say, “teach,”

ignoring one obvious truth:

We all teach every day –but

We don’t all teach well.

Every dad who tells his son not to cry, to “walk it off” and “be a man,”

Every mom who tells her daughter to skip dessert, “sit like a lady,” style her hair just so,

Every waiter who asks for an easier-to-pronounce name for the waitlist,

Every retail worker who follows some people more closely than others,

surveillance so thinly veiled under “just-here-if-you-need-anything” that everyone can read the subtext.

Every influencer spon con that promises spending money can make you 

thin and pretty and happy or 

tough and strong and invulnerable 

Every Disney movie with a slender, light skinned-eyed-and-haired princesses, 

rescued by some prince she’s never met,

somehow still so obviously her One True Love

&c., &c., ad infinitum.

There are  s o     m a n y  bad teachers out there

—everywhere always so ubiquitous they are invisible—

it’s no wonder our kids are so often sad, anxious, or lonely.

What is teaching but doing?

(or, at its best, undoing all those toxic lessons

the youth and we ourselves internalize)

Those who can must

And those who can’t must learn  t o     t e a c h.

by Hannah Lewis, PA Leadership Charter School, WPCTE Vice President

When It Rains...

Gathering of Green - 

Water cans, Youth's wisdom

When it Rains, it Poems.

by Aspen Mock, Forest Hills Junior-Senior High School

Painted Petals

Paper petals pressed

into pain, polished upon

pavement. Poetry's parade.

by Aspen Mock, Forest Hills Junior-Senior High School

Sustenance

Massive, ancient trees

Our boughs reach for the River-

Of What do We seek?

by Aspen Mock, Forest Hills Junior-Senior High School

Written during the Rain Poetry Johnstown Teacher's Workshop

Wellspring

Abound from the ground

Kigo and Satori spring-

It's raining Haiku!

by Aspen Mock, Forest Hills Junior-Senior High School

My student died today

Three students

Two life-flights

One student DOA

“We can’t release the names

Until the families have been notified.”

Families

Families

Families

Searching for faces in attendance

Questions sit in empty seats

Who isn’t here?

Who is alive?

Who isn’t?

How much can a school take?

And how is a school not a family?

by Janel Prinkey, Rocky Grove Jr. Sr. High School

Omoiyari

As I pick up the gum wrappers from the floor,

the abandoned papers from English, math class, or environmental science,

the pieces of mutilated pencils,

and all of the tiny lined-paper fringes that never quite seem to make their way into the garbage,

I lament why students can’t just throw their own trash away.

Why am I stuck here on my hands and knees, collecting scraps like a bird building a nest,

while they are long gone home for the night?

And then I try to find a new perspective, and I begin to wonder how this tiny

act of service

brings me closer to the space in which I teach and the students whom I strive to reach.

I think of students cleaning up their own schools in Japan,

I think of omoiyari and cultivating empathy, and

I think of a conversation once had with a colleague who offered to help me pick up the pieces 

off my floor so I wouldn’t be late to lead musical practice running out the door but then she said:

“The custodian complains about the mess, but isn’t this kind of her job?”

And I think of empathy for her, plus the brilliance that comes out of the mess,

and I wouldn’t trade the craziness, the nest of paper scraps and discarded ideas,

the buzz of fourteen-year-old energy and nonsense and brilliance that I’m gathering from the floor as I scramble out the door—any of it—

I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Anonymous

Student Choice and Shakespeare: Star-Crossed or Symbiotic? by Emily Malovich

 Student Choice and Shakespeare: Star-Crossed or Symbiotic?

by Emily Malovich

If you visited my AP Literature class this winter, you would have seen something every English teacher dreams of: a class of seniors thoroughly engaged in reading, performing, and studying Shakespeare.

About half the class sat at desks, reading along with an audio production alone or with a partner and stopping to discuss their questions and reactions along the way. In the hallway, other groups of students listened aloud together. Still others dedicated themselves to reading the entire play out loud. They were asking questions, grappling with the text, and even excitedly or mournfully sharing their reactions to what they read. And the key that made this Shakespeare unit different? The students were all reading different plays.

Every year as I plan my AP Shakespeare unit, I have a decision to make: Which play are we going to study? Typically, I rotate between Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth. This year, I was inspired by a presentation from the 2024 NCTE Annual Conference by Dr. Sheridan Lynn Steelman about her book club approach to Shakespeare’s problem plays. I was attracted to this approach for several reasons: the element of student choice, its student-led structure, and the real-world application of Shakespeare’s stories. I decided to conduct this year’s Shakespeare unit as a literature circle/individual study using all three plays to examine tragedy as a genre.

My Literature Circle/Individual Study Approach

At the beginning of the unit, students selected their plays, and we spent a couple of days learning about the genre of tragedy. Students read an excerpt of Aristotle’s “On Tragedy,” Anne Carson’s “Tragedy: A Curious Art Form,” and the findings of an interesting research article about schadenfreude. Students wrote about and discussed our central question: what is the purpose, function, or importance of tragedy as a genre?

Next, students jumped into reading their selected plays. Students had the freedom to select how they wanted to read: independently, with a partner, or in a small group; silently, using an audio performance, or aloud in groups. I also shared my recommended film adaptations of Hamlet, Othello (or this non-R-rated version), and Macbeth. Students had the option during the unit to watch and respond to the film for bonus credit.

Before they began their reading of each Act, I led mini-lessons about the elements and structure of tragedy that would be most relevant to that Act.

Because Shakespeare is challenging for so many students, and because they would be reading more independently as opposed to a typical whole-class approach, I incorporated the following scaffolds:

• Professional Audio Recordings: Since Shakespeare is meant to be experienced and not just read, I shared a full cast performance of each play from YouTube.
  
  
• Reading Guides: Teacher-provided guiding questions for each Act and scene. Students were not required to formally answer these questions, but they could use them before reading to help anticipate what would happen or after reading to check for understanding.
  
  
• During Reading Notes: For each Act, students wrote brief summaries of each scene, added to their personal character maps, recorded standout quotes, and journaled their personal reactions. Each set of notes also required them to analyze how the elements and structure of a tragedy were evident in this Act, connecting their reading to our mini-lessons.

After reading, students assessed their understanding of the genre by evaluating their play’s effectiveness and impact as a tragedy. Based on their feedback and my observations, several clear benefits and drawbacks to this approach became evident.

Benefits

1. Student engagement. Multiple times during this unit, I found myself sitting back and realizing that I had never seen a class of students so engaged with the Bard. Many of them came to class excited to get back to the story, and the conversations I observed among students, often ones who were reading different plays, were incredibly insightful and rewarding to hear.
   
   
2. Student-led learning. Students appreciated the chance to move through the text at their own pace and in the method that they preferred. One student commented that this experience was “a lot more personal” because they could focus on the aspects of the story that most interested them within the frame of a genre study. 
   
   
3. Going beyond the text. When teaching a single text, it’s easy to get bogged down in the minutiae and lose sight of the bigger picture. Because students were reading different plays, my instruction had to go beyond the specific events of one play. Focusing on the elements and purpose of tragedy over particular names and details gave the unit more purpose and authenticity.

Drawbacks

1. Differences in plays. Not every play aligned perfectly in content or length. Othello, for example, lacks the supernatural elements of Hamlet and Macbeth. Macbeth’s opening sequence expands into three scenes instead of just one. Hamlet is significantly longer than the other plays. These differences required some flexibility from me and understanding from my students. It is also important to be well-versed in all of the texts offered; I chose to re-read Macbeth along with my students because it had been several years since I taught it, and I was feeling a little rusty with it.
   
   
2. Missing the details. As English teachers, we love the stories we teach and want our students to learn everything there is to know about them, but this isn’t feasible in a student-led approach with multiple texts. Some specific moments or concepts that I might have focused on in a whole class study of the play were certainly overlooked. As I discussed with my students, though, we don’t have to understand everything about a complex text on a first read. Part of the joy of Shakespeare is uncovering new layers of meaning with each exposure.
   
   
3. Teacher workload. Three texts means more prep work from the teacher. Fortunately, I was able to adapt materials from teaching these texts in the past, which made the workload a little easier to manage.

Concluding Thoughts

Despite the drawbacks, the way that my students engaged with Shakespeare during this unit made this trial an overall success. My students overwhelmingly indicated that they preferred the literature circle/independent study approach to the whole class approach they have experienced in the past. Multiple students commented that this was their favorite thing we had read this year, or the first time they felt like they could enjoy or understand Shakespeare. (Though don’t get me wrong -- some students still professed by the end that they do not like Shakespeare!) Being able to pick what and how they read and direct their own study of the plays made this a meaningful experience for my AP Literature students. While student choice and Shakespeare is a challenging dynamic, it is worth exploring to create more authentic, engaging experiences with the works of the Bard.

Author Bio

Emily Malovich (she/her) is the WPCTE Blog Coordinator. She teaches sophomore English and AP Literature at Sharpsville Area High School in Mercer County. Currently, she is pursuing her D.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction at IUP and writing her dissertation about classroom teachers’ experiences with book banning. Outside of teaching, her hobbies include the “three B’s”: books, birding, and sourdough bread. Contact her at emalovich@sasdpride.org.

 

Virtual Author Visits: The Joy of Connecting Students to Authors by Amy Bouch

Virtual Author Visits: The Joy of Connecting Students to Authors

by Amy Bouch

As a lover of reading, I fangirl over every author that I meet—no matter if it is in person or virtually. No matter how many authors I meet, or if I’ve even met them before, I am always overcome with pure excitement. Authors are my version of professional sports players and movie stars.

My journey of connecting students with authors through virtual meets began in spring 2019–before virtual visits became so common and when Skype was still popular. Around 2018, I became obsessed with verse novels, and I’m so glad that they have become increasingly published. I loved verse novels so much that I went to various authors’ websites. I then learned that some authors were willing to have virtual Q&A sessions for free! Cue the excitement. So, I contacted authors: I found their email addresses, I drafted emails, and I sent them. Then I not-so-patiently awaited their responses. Lucky me—they were willing to meet! I then sought approval from my principal, advertised the event to students, coordinated students reading the book, and then enjoyed the visit with the author! In the beginning, we enjoyed virtual visits with Susan Hood (Lifeboat 12), Ellie Terry (Forget Me Not), and K. A. Holt (House Arrest).

In 2025, I took another leap and decided to connect all of my students in all of my classes with an author! I had previously offered author events for students willing to sign up and specifically attend an event, but I hadn’t brought an event to the masses, to the students who wouldn’t go out of their way to choose to spend their time with an author.

Enter World Read Aloud Day! As stated on their website, “LitWorld founded World Read Aloud Day® (WRAD) in 2010 to celebrate the power of reading aloud to create community and amplify new stories, and to advocate for literacy as a foundational human right.” Author Kate Messner curates a great resource of authors willing to connect with classrooms for WRAD (sign up for her newsletter to get the information). I used this list to reach out to multiple authors. I included the times of all of my class periods and let them know that I was willing to make the visit work during any time of the class period. I contacted authors I was familiar with and authors whose websites appealed to me. Each visit was around 15-20 minutes. Thank you to the authors who virtually visited my classes for WRAD 2025: Sydney Dunlap, Chris Baron, Kellie McIntyre, Kalyn Josephson, and Jennifer Camiccia. And thank you in advance to the authors visiting in 2026!

Students who hadn’t previously signed up for author visits were excited to meet the author during class. Some students were astonished that the authors would actually be willing to meet with us. Several authors gave sneak peeks into upcoming books. Students loved that they got to hear a read aloud from a book before it was published.

Meeting with authors is great because it allows students to associate real writers with their books. It also allows students to ask questions. They can learn more about the book specifically or about writing in general. Hearing writing advice directly from authors is amazing. The two biggest tips that authors frequently give is to read as much as possible and to focus on revising. As many teachers know, it can be very difficult to get students to revise. It is really helpful to hear famous authors share that revising is one of their top priorities for their books. This message can then be continually referenced throughout the year. Other students commented that it was interesting to hear where authors get their ideas for books such as childhood memories. Some authors also shared that they write books that aren’t published yet. This lets students see that people write much more than what is commercially published.

If this blog post has convinced you to connect your students with authors through free virtual visits but you’re not sure where to start, here are some opportunities that you can register for and attend without individually coordinating with the author:

National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)

• NCTE offers various events throughout the year that often include author events. Most notably, they host an author to celebrate the National Day on Writing where students can write alongside the author. Also, there is frequently an author spotlight for the National African American Read-In. (Read more suggestions about the African American Read-In on this blog post.)

Scholastic Storyvoice

• Scholastic offers free weekly “read-alouds, draw-alongs, and live Q&As with top authors, illustrators, and more.” You just need a Scholastic account to participate!

Makin’s Storyteller Spotlight

• Makin offers various events that focus on live readings and Q&As. The recordings are also often available on their website, so if the live event does not work for you, you can stream it later.

If you are ready to set up your own events, then here are my suggested steps:

• Read books that will interest your students
• Visit author websites to see if they advertise free Q&As and to find contact information
• Reach out to authors, even if they don’t specifically advertise free virtual visits
• Schedule the virtual visits
• Advertise to your students
• Enjoy the virtual visit!

I wish you all the joy of bringing virtual author visits to your students!

About the Author

Amy Bouch is a reading-obsessed 8th-grade English Language Arts teacher at Chartiers Valley Middle School. She is the President of the Western Pennsylvania Council of Teachers of English (WPCTE), a Teacher-Consultant for the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project (WPWP), and a Co-Vice President of the Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar (ATEG). Amy was the 2022 ATEG Grammar Teacher of the Year, the 2023 NCTE Edwyna Wheadon Postgraduate Training Scholarship recipient, and a member of the 2022 NCTE Middle Level Section Nominating Committee. Amy’s favorite parts of teaching include getting over-the-top excited when pairing students with books they’ll love, empowering students to share their writing with wider audiences, and inspiring students to find the magic and power in grammar. Connect with her at abouch@cvsd.net.

Falk Family Book Club by Emma Kagan

 Falk Family Book Club

by Emma Kagan

Back in spring 2025, my co-librarian at Falk School, Benoni Outerbridge, and I dreamed up ways to increase reading joy and engagement in our community. An idea sparked to create a family book club event, and we got really excited about the possibilities. We were particularly interested in creating an event for Primary students (K-2), since we already engage over 100 Intermediate and Middle school students each year through the WPCTE English Festival program. We applied for an internal grant through our school administration and were awarded funding. The total cost of the event, including books, food and materials came to about $500. After lots of brainstorming, planning, and collaborating with our fabulous colleagues, the event came to life on Wednesday, November 5.

The book we chose to read for our inaugural family book club was Oh, Sal by Kevin Henkes. Oh, Sal is a relatively short chapter book about a young girl named Sal and her family. It is a cozy, humorous book that takes place around the winter holiday season. Sal has a new baby sister at home and is adjusting to life as an older sibling. She also mysteriously loses her favorite Christmas gift, a pair of floral underpants! We picked Oh, Sal because we wanted a book that students had likely not read before and was a book not all students might gravitate towards on their own. Part of our grant funding allowed the 45 families that registered for the event to receive a free copy of the book. If you want to do this type of event, but do not have funding for books you could also encourage families to get a copy of the book from the public library. We sent the book home with a bookmark that contained guided discussion questions and a reminder of the book club event date.

Families had about a month to read on their own before the evening book club event. Meanwhile, we assembled a team of teachers that wanted to be involved in planning the event. Since the event was geared towards Kindergarten, first and second grade we decided to move away from a more traditional discussion focused book club and instead create activities related to the book.

We chose to hold the event from 6:00 - 7:30pm and had a complimentary pizza dinner to kick off the evening. During dinner we put our discussion questions on cafeteria tables to encourage families to make connections and chat about the book. Following dinner, students rotated through three activities - art, music, and trivia. Students had 20 minutes to enjoy each activity (see attached image for the full schedule). In the art activity students made a beaded necklace craft inspired by a necklace Sal wears in the book. The music activity had students signing and moving to flower songs (Sal’s floral underpants are a big part of the plot!). Finally, for trivia we used Mentimeter, an interactive online resource that helped us ask a variety of open and closed-ended questions. Parents were able to join the mentimeter on their phones (we had a few extra iPads if needed) and play with their children.

The night of the event we saw so many smiles and students happy to be participating in their very first book club! Since the event we have gotten many requests for another book club event. Our current plan is to have a third grade family book club event in the spring and another event for primary students and families in the fall of 2026. I would highly encourage other teachers to think about planning a book club event for students and their families. One piece of advice is to work with other teachers so you can share the work of planning and facilitating the event. Family literacy is so important to developing a positive relationship with reading and having a book club event was one impactful way to spark joy around reading. 

About the Author

Emma Kagan is a School Librarian at Falk School. She is a lifelong lover of libraries, a space she feels so lucky to get to share with K-8 students each day. She believes that literacy is a human right and that supporting literacy through the library is crucial to student learning. Outside of Falk, you can find Emma coaching Falk's cross-country team, biking and running around Pittsburgh, and of course, reading!

Bonus Post: The Requisites and Raptures of Digital Storytelling by Brett Pierce

 The Requisites and Raptures of Digital Storytelling

by Brett Pierce

This blog has the singular aim of introducing, for your reflection, consideration and practice, the idea of integrating digital storytelling – the ‘writing’ side of digital literacy – into your classroom; of making this normative. The reasons are multifold and, I would argue, critical to the future success of your students. But I’ll begin with our burgeoning understanding of the moving target that is encompassed by the word, ‘literacy.’

Amidst the technological maelstrom that has enveloped us all, text is no longer the only game in town. The 2020 NCTE Committee on Global Citizenship wrote:

At its simplest, literacy is the way that we interact with the world around us, how we shape it and are shaped by it. It is how we communicate with others via reading and writing, but also by speaking, listening, and creating. It is how we articulate our experience in the world and declare, “We Are Here!””

Think about it: how do students ‘interact with the world around [them]’ and how do they ‘articulate [their] experience in the world and declare, “We are Here!”’? The answer: digitally.  The digital realm is their communication platform. It’s their social life. It’s their source of knowledge. It’s their language. It’s a full-blown communication spectrum the breadth and depth of which is unprecedented in history. 

Has there ever been a more all-consuming and far-reaching literacy? Has the need to teach toward ‘writing’ fluency in this literacy ever been greater? The question then is: Are we preparing our kids to be meaningful contributors to this digitally literate universe; to declare, ‘We are Here!’ in a meaningful and impactful way? And the answer is mostly, ‘No.’  

This is where digital storytelling comes in. Digital Storytelling is the capacity to communicate using text, sound, music, and imagery – still and moving. You don’t have to use all of these tools, but they are the main components of digital storytelling. If we think of this in terms of primary and secondary colors, then text, sound/music and imagery are your primary colors. Pacing, visual palette, graphics, voice, tone, and genre (comedy, game show, news, mystery, etc.) might be your secondary colors. It’s a relatively vast range of tools with which to work in order to effectively communicate. And in that range lies both its complexity and wonder, challenge and opportunity. 

Is it teachable without prior media production knowledge? Yes! All you need to know is what you know: the content. The answer to any question from the students about digital production and IT-related questions is this: “You figure it out.” Here’s the reality. In traditional text-based literacy, you, the educator, know the rules and you teach those rules to your students…whether you are teaching science, math, history, or literature. Text-based literacy is powered by rules of syntax and grammar, word choices and punctuation. Digital Literacy is not about rules as much as it is about mechanics. Digital Literacy is about knowing 1) the individual operations of the different digital parts (imagery, music, sound, editing, zooms, etc.); and 2) how those different digital parts all synchronize with each other. For the students, discovering these digital mechanics – including cool apps that let letters fly or distort an image to comic effect – is like letting them loose in an educational playground designed just for them. Except it’s digital.

Discovering the various components of digital literacy is part of the learning experience. Teaching you, the educator, what they, the students, have discovered, is also a vital part of the learning experience. We all know the power of this flipped classroom model, even in this micro format. But it still takes guts and confidence to yield that control of information and knowledge. 

But the payoff is huge. 

Can you assess a digital story like you grade a paper? Yes-Plus, is the answer. Your assessment falls into four categories: Content Command, Storytelling or Narrative Command, Digital Literacy Command, and Human (or 21st Century) Skills Command. To see some free examples of how digital storytelling projects approach the curriculum and provide clear assessment rubrics, check out the free language arts projects from the non-profit, Meridian Stories, as well as the annual Digital Storytelling Competition for middle and high school students that I run.  

One of the many beauties of digital storytelling is the depth of the narrative bench at its disposal. In addition to traditional text-based narrative genres, there is well over seventy years of television and twenty plus years of the Internet that has yielded myriad narrative forms that can be applied in the classroom. We are talking Game Shows, Reality Shows, Sitcoms, Music Videos, Sketch Comedies, Vlogs, How-To Tutorials and Product Reviews. Imagine asking students to create a Product Review of … a novel, a current global leader, or your town’s recycling commitment.

Digital Storytelling in the classroom is an invitation to students to utilize their intimate knowledge of television, podcasting, and social media narrative formats to explore curricular content. That is part of the attraction for students – tapping into their practically organic knowledge of these genres of storytelling. 

All of these different narrative structures champion different storytelling strengths. From the personal journey of the vlog to the focus on voice and character in the radio drama; from the variety of perspectives and expertise in the special news cast (think anchor, color commentator, field reporter and interviewee) to the use of comedy to communicate important, visceral content in an SNL-esque parody sketch, the digital story offers students a seemingly infinite series of creative choices that open portals into understanding and communicating serious content, and all inside of the digital universe in which they spend half of their lives.

In the end, if we are to properly prepare our students for life after secondary school, we need to set them up to succeed digitally; to communicate meaningfully inside the digital landscape of stories; contribute responsibly to these new libraries of digital stories. This means consistently experimenting with text, sound, music, imagery, voice, story, tone, perspective, narrative format, time, color, …the list goes on. And to do this, the students need to collaborate, create, think critically, problem solve, work iteratively, present publicly, manage time and schedules, make decisions, master digital apps, …that list goes on too. The educational value is clear and inexorable.

And here’s the concluding killer piece to it all. For the students, …it’s a blast!  

Finally, if you’ve made it to the end here, I’ll assume that something here has captured your creative educational imagination. Meridian Stories can help jumpstart your integration of digital storytelling in the classroom and I am happy to offer it to WPCTE members and their schools for free ($300 value) for this school year. Just drop me a short email (brett@meridianstories.org) and we’ll make it happen. 

Thanks for your time and mind. 

About the Author

Brett is the founder and Executive Director of Meridian Stories, a Digital Storytelling nonprofit for middle and high schoolers that challenges students to create digital narratives around core curricular goals in a friendly, annual competition (brett@meridianstories.org). Brett recently authored his first book with Heinemann Publishing, Expanding Literacy: Bringing Digital Storytelling into Your Classroom, and wrote the National Geographic Storytelling for Impact course series in 2022 which won the Gold Anthem Award.

Brett has spent much of his professional life at Sesame Workshop in New York City, serving as a Co-Executive Producer on media projects about literacy, math, science, global citizenry and conflict-resolution for youth around the world, including projects in China, North Macedonia, Indonesia, Poland, Iraq, and South Sudan. He is currently working on a new SEL television series for pre-schoolers that is slated to launch worldwide in 2026.

Brett began his career teaching English in a high school in Virginia, and has continued teaching intermittently at Fordham University, University of Southern Maine, and Colby College. Brett has a BA from Kenyon College, and Masters Degrees from Middlebury College (English) and Columbia University (Education). He is married with two grown children and lives in Freeport, Maine.

Literacy for Liberation: PCTELA ‘25 Behind Us, and the Future of our Classrooms Ahead by Hannah Lewis and Sarah Wilt

 Literacy for Liberation: PCTELA ‘25 Behind Us, and the Future of our Classrooms Ahead

by Hannah Lewis and Sarah Wilt

This post celebrates Mx. Sarah Wilt and Ms. Hannah Lewis’s experiences co-chairing the 2025 PCTELA conference in October, and is co-written by the two of us.

Collaborating on the PCTELA '25 conference was a new experience for us, but we agreed to the task in part because we value and appreciate one another’s approaches to our work, but in larger part because we felt an imperative: to address the inequities in PA classrooms that the Covid-19 pandemic had made visible, exacerbated, and created the opportunity to address, but which instead had gone largely ignored.

As the year of planning went on and threats to literacy education proliferated, we wanted to organize our conference in a way that would empower educators–help us to see the urgency of the work we do. We needed to reclaim literacy as a liberatory force, and ensure our pedagogy aligned with that goal. So we came up with the conference theme: Literacy for Liberation.

From the featured speakers who shared their unique and diverse perspectives with us to the classroom teachers who showed up with strategies to uplift student voices, our community of educators came through. This conference was an incredible opportunity to think together as a community about what it means to harness the liberatory power of literacy in Pennsylvania classrooms in 2025 and moving forward.

We’d like to highlight a few of the exemplary presentations for members who could not attend.

Featured Speakers

Featured speakers included youth librarian and mental health advocate Caiden Feldmiller, whose insights into the needs of LGBTQ+ teens and those with mental illnesses provided thought-provoking guidance that all of us can use to better handle sensitive topics in our classrooms and ensure each and every student we teach is seen and has a space to be their authentic selves. Find out more about his work at the Sewickley teen library here.

Saturday, former NCTE president Alfredo Luján started our day with his own story of his ongoing literacy liberation–you can find his take-aways later in this post.

Finally, professor of education and advocate for sex education and bodily literacy Dr. Stephanie Jones reminded us of the imperative to create space for students to learn about their bodies and how they exist in the world. With a prolific career and a significant online presence, it may be difficult to know where to start exploring her work, but this provocative podcast episode provides a way in for those who missed her talk, and introduces the exciting liberatory practice of a “read in” for a book challenged for its LGBTQ-supportive content.

In addition to our featured speakers, we want to highlight a few other conference attendees, but we invite you to review the full program to see all of the great work that was showcased.

First-Time Presenters

We want to share work from presenters new to NCTE affiliate conferences, but whose participation in PCTELA and other NCTE affiliate events we hope to see continue in years to come, including at NCTE in Philadelphia in 2026.

Dr. Jim Gerencser of Dickinson College’s Digital Resource Center for the Carlisle Indian Industrial School provides primary sources and free teacher resources that we can use to educate ourselves and our students about the Carlisle Indian Industrial School and the widespread assimilationist mission of boarding schools for Indigenous children in the U.S. and elsewhere in the Americas.

While his colleague, Dr. Amanda Cheromiah, was unable to attend, her work with the college’s Center for the Future of Native Peoples deserves mention, too. We invite you to explore the myriad resources and initiatives the Center makes available.

Dr. Karen Detlefsen of the University of Pennsylvania Project for Philosophy for the Young, along with colleague Dr. Dustin Webster and veteran Philadelphia educators Kathryn Sundeen and Francesca Canterini shared resources to promote reasoned ethical discourse in the classroom. Their work focused on Ethics Bowl events, but the resources they shared, including the National Ethics Bowl Case Library, are excellent tools for use in middle- and high school classrooms. In fact, Hannah’s already used one of the cases in her A.P. Seminar classroom this year, and her students loved it!

WPCTE members who double as WPWP teaching fellows, with WPWP director Dr. Khirsten Scott. Left to right: Heather Bixler, Khirsten Scott, Hannah Lewis, Carol Frow, and Katie Katkich.

WPCTE Members

And we’d love to acknowledge the work of WPCTE members below:

WPCTE Executive Director Carol Frow presented “Do You Want to Learn about Upstanders or Be One? Teaching Holocaust Literature to Create Student Upstanders,” highlighting how discussions around literature can inform students’ attitudes to their agency when others are treated in ways they know to be wrong.

WPCTE Slam Poetry Coordinator Katie Katkich presented “Amplifying Student Voices Through Slam and Spoken Word Poetry: Culturally Sustaining and Socially Engaged Learning in the ELA Classroom.” Check out her related work on the WPCTE’s Poetry Slam page.

WPWP teaching fellow Heather Bixler presented “Family Matters: Adapting Our Literature and Lessons for Adoptive and Foster Families,” reminding us that youth in foster care or who have been adopted deserve to learn in supportive classrooms.

Featured speaker and former NCTE president Alfredo Luján and WPCTE Vice-President Hannah Lewis co-presented “Free(ly) Writing the Word and the World,” exploring the ways we can disrupt traditional attitudes towards literacy in our classrooms and celebrate our students’ literacies (plural), including in free writes and sustained multimodal projects.

We’ll leave the last word on the experience to Alfredo Luján, who expresses the take-aways we’d hoped all our members would internalize, and leaves us with a call to action that we hope to echo and amplify:

This literacy event has helped me realize what my daughter Amanda, an ASL interpreter, said to me one day when I was espousing Vygotsky’s theory on language acquisition. “Language is never acquired. It is always being developed.” Each of us continues to develop liberation through literacy, as do our students. Our literacy is everything under our hat, the air and things around us, plus what we listen to, what we read and write, what we say and do, our home languages and cultures – our heritage. Our ability and each student’s ability to claim our, her, his, their own name and identity through being, reading, writing, and listening is emancipation from assimilation. The Secretary of Education and the Federal Administration should embrace and respect multi-cultural/multi-lingual literacy in current America.

Dear literacy educators, grow a thick skin to repel the bureaucracy. Resist. As you help liberate your students through their literacies, your way to heaven is being paved.