The clock is ticking, the days on the calendar are drawing short, and every teacher knows time is limited. For all readers, every moment in the classroom is critical; this imperative is certainly true for the older reader.

I once invited a refugee from Rwanda to be a guest speaker for my ELA/social studies class. She shared how she lost her entire family during the Rwandan genocide and was forced to live in a refugee camp for 17 years with no running water or electricity.

I stepped into the classroom for the first time at the Lab School on the campus of the University of California in Los Angeles more than a decade ago and did what I do best: I told stories.

Jason D. DeHart is a passionate educator, currently teaching English at Wilkes Central High School in Wilkesboro, NC. He served as a middle-grades English teacher for eight years and an assistant professor of reading education at Appalachian State University from 2019 to 2022.

Spring leads to summer, and summer usually leads to a change of routine that shifts how students interact with words, text, and all forms of literacy. Known as summer reading loss, this phenomenon affects many students—especially those who are already performing below grade-level expectations.

Truth be told, I am not a big science fiction fan, although I can appreciate those who enjoy the genre. Give me an autobiography or a research article and I’ll curl up, contented, in my airplane seat as I fly to my next Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS®) presentation—except, of course, that wasn’t possible this past year.