#neverforget: My 9/11 Story

#neverforget: My 9/11 Story

This post was originally written on my personal blog in 2003. It has been revised and reposted each year since then. It feels like just yesterday. I had moved into my dorm at Douglass College just days earlier. As I sat in the dining hall with my best friend Erin chatting about our schedules on that beautiful morning, I remember hearing the morning radio show on the overhead speakers talking about the Twin Towers.

thereadingzone.wordpress.com

English teachers- what are we using for a lockdown browser? Is there something that allows teachers to open and close something like a doc? (Why doesn’t Classroom allow this?!

We need to stop calling genAI tools "thought partners" when they are merely probability machines. There is no room for genAI classrooms. thereadingzone.wordpress.com/2026/06/19/n...

Not a “Thought Partner”: Reclaiming Our Classrooms from Silicon Valley

Photo by Mary Taylor on Pexels.com In May, the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford published test score data showing a decline in American students’ standardized test scores. The data show …

thereadingzone.wordpress.com

“But we must make them workforce-ready!” In that case, shouldn’t we be replace English with “Slack + Salesforce for Sophs? GenAI is a tool…Until now, we’ve trusted students can adapt to employer training because of the skills they learn in K-12…” thereadingzone.wordpress.com/2026/06/19/n...

Not a “Thought Partner”: Reclaiming Our Classrooms from Silicon Valley

Photo by Mary Taylor on Pexels.com In May, the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford published test score data showing a decline in American students’ standardized test scores. The data show …

thereadingzone.wordpress.com

I feel like it's more defending our classrooms and students from silicon valley at this point

Sarah Mulhern Gross@thereadingzone.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Not a “Thought Partner”: Reclaiming Our Classrooms from Silicon Valley Photo by Mary Taylor on Pexels.com In May, the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford published test score data showing a decline in American students’ standardized test scores. The data show what teachers have long known:…

Not a “Thought Partner”: Reclaiming Our Classrooms from Silicon Valley Photo by Mary Taylor on Pexels.com In May, the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford published test score data showing a decline in American students’ standardized test scores. The data show what teachers have long known:…

Not a “Thought Partner”: Reclaiming Our Classrooms from Silicon Valley

Photo by Mary Taylor on Pexels.com In May, the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford published test score data showing a decline in American students’ standardized test scores. The data show what teachers have long known: students spend too much time on screens and not enough time reading, writing, and thinking. This generation was handed a Chromebook in kindergarten and a cell phone before the end of elementary school, and now we are giving them unfettered access to generative AI.

thereadingzone.wordpress.com

Important read by an incredibly brilliant teacher

Sarah Mulhern Gross@thereadingzone.bsky.social · 5mo ago

It's time to hit pause in AI integration in schools.

At #NCTE26, I’ll be at #poetry roundtables with this crew 🤩: @joelrgarza.bsky.social @rebekahodell1.bsky.social @heymrsbond.com @marcusluther.bsky.social @thereadingzone.bsky.social @mraleosays.bsky.social @cayneletizia.bsky.social @xochitlbentley.bsky.social and more!

thereadingzone.wordpress.com/2026/06/17/t... It's time to hit pause on AI integration in schools.

The Dystopian EdTech Trap

A few weeks ago, I opened a blank Google Doc to work on a lesson plan and was met with a new reality. There at the bottom of the document, politely asking how it could help, was Gemini, Google’s ge…

thereadingzone.wordpress.com

There is a thrill in this. There guys are PUSHING SO HARD. They’re relentlessly doing interviews, writing articles and pushing propaganda. They’re used to everyone buying their bullshit!! But this time everyone’s like “nah”. It must feel inexplicable for them and that is so satisfying.

Matt Novak@paleofuture.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Only 16% of Americans believe AI will have a positive impact on society

It's time to hit pause in AI integration in schools.

The Dystopian EdTech Trap

A few weeks ago, I opened a blank Google Doc to work on a lesson plan and was met with a new reality. There at the bottom of the document, politely asking how it could help, was Gemini, Google’s generative AI tool.   My 9th-grade students had just completed a comparative literary analysis essay after reading The Tempest and a contemporary book discussed in their book clubs. 

thereadingzone.wordpress.com

It's time to hit pause in AI integration in schools.

The Dystopian EdTech Trap

A few weeks ago, I opened a blank Google Doc to work on a lesson plan and was met with a new reality. There at the bottom of the document, politely asking how it could help, was Gemini, Google’s generative AI tool.   My 9th-grade students had just completed a comparative literary analysis essay after reading The Tempest and a contemporary book discussed in their book clubs. 

thereadingzone.wordpress.com

We are seeing this with the iReady lawsuit. AI is even worse!

Alice Harper@aliceharper0101.bsky.social · 7mo ago

the disclosure gap matters because parents can't opt out of what they don't know is happening. informed consent requires information.

Brought in Alan Gratz's latest book today (War Games) and the kids are practically fighting over the order of the borrow list. They are comparing their favorite Gratz titles and arguing over which one is the best.

Still angry about AI use being forced on students and educators at the K-12 level. Why aren't schools disclosing to parents how the district is using AI (ie what tools teachers have access to and how they will be used on student work).

We are at a crossroads with genAI and schools. I am going to lose my mind thanks to people not in the classroom constantly pushing teachers, especially in the humanities, to use AI.

What a day. I’ve teared up so many times watching NASA’s coverage- the Carroll crater, mae the friendship bracelets and 🫶, poetry and photography alongside science, so many women in Mission Control, the science, and so much more.

THIS THIS THIS. Districts need to stop pushing AI into the curriculum. There is no good pedagogical or developmental reason to give K-12 students access to AI tools. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-...

Adults Lose Skills to AI. Children Never Build Them. | Psychology Today

Discussions of cognitive offloading often miss a critical distinction: What AI does to a 45-year-old's brain is categorically different from what it does to a 14-year-old's.

psychologytoday.com

Audible exclusives should be illegal. The only way to access a particular format of a book, especially one that makes a book more accessible to all readers, should not be behind a paywall for years. (This complaint right to you by the second half of the Throne of Glass series).

What are you up to Tuesday, March 31 at 7pm ET? Join @ncte.org's Secondary Section (7-12 ELA teachers!) for Zoom space to chat, connect, and explore NCTE. How can NCTE support you? What has worked? Come meet other secondary ELA teachers who are members of NCTE. ncte.org/secondary-of... #NCTEChat

Ludacris performing the soundtrack of my college years is exactly what I needed this week. #iheartradioawards

The wholesale adoption of AI in schools is awful. I am a teacher who used social media with teens in the 2010s. I piloted using cell phones in the classroom. My students have been blogging and creating videos for Project for Awesome for over 15 years. I say this to make it clear that I love tech.

This week the copy machine jammed every time used it, 2 printers broke, + I spent way too much time dealing w/phantom paper jams. My laptop broke last year & I had to use a 10+ yr old loaner until I got a slightly newer loaner last week. We have to justify ordering paper & pens. Robot teachers. 😂

The push to use AI in the classroom, especially reading and writing classes, may be what finally breaks me. I need anyone who is not in the classroom to just stop. I need parents to start asking more questions about why districts are forcing/allowing educators to upload student work to an AI abyss.

This week at work is going to end me. Spring break can’t get here fast enough.

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media2.giphy.com

Melissa gambling on this week’s Abbott Elementary is a little too close to what some high schoolers are doing. 😬

Oh Gotham. 😬

I almost took a baseball bat to the copy machine today, à la Office Space. And we use Papercut, so you get logged out within a minute and can’t see your jobs/what’s left/any info. 🤬

What a time to be an English teacher. My seniors just finished The Handmaid’s Tale and today we begin Parable of the Sower.

The American Indian Youth Literature Award for best young adult book goes to ‘Legendary Frybread Drive-In: Intertribal Stories,’ edited by Cynthia Leitich Smith #ALAyma