The best professional development? On social media!

Below are eight valuable accounts for English teachers:

Blogs

Here Wee Read

This blog is created by Charnaie Gordon, a content creator, speaker, and children’s book author.
I love using children’s books in my high school classes for various lessons. Each year, regardless of the grade I’m teaching, I usually teach a unit about representation. This blog is a great resource for finding children’s books with diverse characters.

Emily Aierstok is an English teacher with 22 years of experience in grades 7-12. She teachers in upstate New York.
She has fantastic resources around standards based grading and how to more efficiently give students feedback on their writing. Both are topics that I struggle with so I’ll definitely be spending more time diving into her resources.

Ms. G is currently a middle school English teacher and formerly taught at the high school level.
One concern I have about moving from the classroom to the library is being able to keep up with all of the different titles and having enough knowledge to match students with the right books. Ms. G has curated book lists by genre, links to book trailers, ideas for “First Chapter Friday,” and what she calls “Book Tastings.” All of these resources seem to be great ways for me to become more familiar with YA and middle grade books without necessarily reading all of them.

Instagram Accounts

This account is run by someone named Cayla. There isn’t much information about her in her bio but she lists herself as the #19Nonfiction creator and a budding historian.
Cayla created a nonfiction reading challenge that has prompts on a five by five grid that encourage folks to read 19 nonfiction books or to complete five prompts in a row. I’m interested in Cayla’s focus on nonfiction titles as I usually require my AP class to read nonfiction for independent reading. Her account has some great recommendations!

Carmen Alvarez is a Latinx bookstagramer who according to her profile is “always shouting about diverse and feminist YA books.”
Carmen has tons of great book recommendations and consistently posts about new releases. Her account will be a valuable resource when selecting new books for the library.

Melanie Wood is an elementary teacher librarian.
Even though I don’t plan on working at the elementary school level, I love Melanie’s ideas for making the library more aesthetic and welcoming. She has fantastic display ideas which is something I will definitely need some inspiration for.

Podcasts

Mindshift is hosted by Ki Sung who used to be “a digital news trainer at NPR, where she gained valuable lessons about how people learn.” The podcast is also hosted by Niamh Gobir, a former teacher and curriculum developer.
This podcast is fitting for this week’s topic as the hosts explore the future of learning. Technology is obviously changing the way we teach so this podcast could be a resource for me as a teacher and when I move into a new role as a librarian. I’m especially interested in an episode from April about centering joy!

This podcast is hosted by Jennifer Gonzalez, a former English teacher. She interviews teachers, administrators, and parents about schooling.
The best PD is the kind where you leave with a new idea to try the next day and that’s how I feel listening to The Cult of Pedagogy. Gonzalez’s episodes either have a new idea for me to try or a reminder of something I may have forgotten. I also love that this podcast has a webpage for each episode so that I can refer back to the information discussed.

The Reading Renaissance