This is my jam: teaching and reading and dealing with grief. The hole in my heart is ever-present. I have to work. I have to go on. I have to write about it. This essay…
Marriage in the Mountains
This piece started to take shape when it was my turn to drive. My husband pulled into a rest area so we could switch. When I was settled behind the wheel, he made some funny…
Oh Reader
Grief and growth take center stage in The Third Mushroom, a middle-grade novel by the talented Jennifer L. Holm that serves as a follow-up to The Fourteenth Goldfish, a book I shared with my first…
Omissions
I started writing Omissions after a real-life examination of my faculty bio on my school’s website midyear into a new teaching position. My sixth-grade students were to profile a faculty member of their choice, but…
What a Children’s Book Taught Me (and My Students) About Grief
Michelle Cuevas’s powerful children’s book, The Care and Feeding of a Pet Black Hole, features prominently in my essay about navigating grief while preparing for my new role as an English teacher at North Country…
What’s Your Grief – Books & Broken Hearts
The website What’s Your Grief published a piece I wrote this summer. It highlights three contemporary middle-grade books that are ideal for facilitating meaningful conversations and classroom activities about trauma, grief, and loss with students.…