Author | Lightnews

Erin Palazzo

@erinpalazzo.bsky.social

480 followers 190 following 80 posts

New Englander; bookworm; obsessed with coffee & podcasts; sarcasm & GIFs are my love languages; #iteachEnglish 📖 AP Lang/HS English teacher; 2020 BookLove grant winner; #NCTE member & #gradeless advocate; Walden Pond is my happy place

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Erin Palazzo @erinpalazzo.bsky.social · Mar 27

That was my face when I saw Karen Read added one of the former jurors to her legal team for the new trial that starts next week!

Erin Palazzo @erinpalazzo.bsky.social · Jan 10

My favorite image for days like that:

Parody of a classic painting in the style of someone like Rembrandt, it reads “snow predicted: oil on canvas” and is a painting of a loaf of bread, gallon of milk, & roll of toilet paper against a dark brown counter and background.

1 3

Erin Palazzo @erinpalazzo.bsky.social · Jan 3

Will it eliminate all forms of cheating or work avoidance? No. But it definitely makes an impact. And it teaches them their voices & independent critical thinking matters. And those two things are essential for our democracy!

1 2

Erin Palazzo @erinpalazzo.bsky.social · Jan 3

We’ve got to give the kids agency! Let them write with their own excited voices! Stop “valorizing formal academic English above all else all the time” (#NCTE24).

2 3

Erin Palazzo @erinpalazzo.bsky.social · Jan 3

…to ideas that might work for his type of book specifically, like flashbacks or other organizational choices. Y’all. He was both so shocked & so excited that he could pick a book he wants to read & write about whatever he finds interesting instead of everyone having a single book & narrow focus!

1 2

Erin Palazzo @erinpalazzo.bsky.social · Jan 3

One just got I’m Glad My Mom Died for Christmas & he was unsure “if memoirs would work.” I said how much I loved that book & it was a great choice—talked about different approaches, from traditional like the complexity of her relationship with her mom…

1 2

Erin Palazzo @erinpalazzo.bsky.social · Jan 3

Why choice matters: my sophomores are writing lit analysis essays this month. They pick the book (regular, in verse, or graphic novel), they pick the reading method (paper, ebook, or audiobook—just have a hard copy too for when we start the essay). Kids were 🤯 when they heard all this.

2 5

Erin Palazzo @erinpalazzo.bsky.social · Dec 22

They are good!

Erin Palazzo @erinpalazzo.bsky.social · Dec 21

The If Books Could Kill podcast did a 2 hour takedown of this book back in August

1 4

Erin Palazzo @erinpalazzo.bsky.social · Dec 21

…4 Shakespeare in 5 years is too many. And unless they take AP Lit, the ONLY other exposure to drama they get is one play jr. year (Crucible, Salesman, Raisin, or Fences). Do Shakespeare really well once or twice & then give Ss a fuller education in the drama genre!

Erin Palazzo @erinpalazzo.bsky.social · Dec 21

Whatever angle I take—love, tragedy, parent-child conflict, feuds—I can think of other texts that would be richer & I can teach well in half the time. Cutting doesn’t hurt my Ss as they also get Midsummer, 12th Night, & Hamlet or Macbeth in 8, 10, & 12…

1 2

Erin Palazzo @erinpalazzo.bsky.social · Dec 21

We need to stop teaching Romeo & Juliet!

2 4

Erin Palazzo @erinpalazzo.bsky.social · Dec 19

Yes! I’m on my district’s committee to develop an AI policy & I’m bookmarking this & a whole bunch of other wisdom in here to help me speak clearly in what will likely be the dissenting minority

Erin Palazzo @erinpalazzo.bsky.social · Dec 19

It’s also called pebbling! redsetteragency.com/articles/wor...

Words we love: Pebbling – a new love language | Blog | Red Setter

It’s a word I admit I’ve not really thought of, until in recent weeks it became news that ‘Pebbling’ is the new term for when people share memes and gifs to...

redsetteragency.com

Erin Palazzo @erinpalazzo.bsky.social · Dec 19

Yes! Those are the correct answers! And also a handful of mildliners.

1 3

Erin Palazzo @erinpalazzo.bsky.social · Dec 17

Days like today make me wonder how quickly we could get legislation if a nation’s worth of teachers went on strike…

Reposted by Erin Palazzo

Anne Lutz Fernandez @lutzfernandez.bsky.social · Dec 15

When teachers complain about not having enough planning time, most are not complaining about having to plan.

They are complaining about not having time because they have too many classes, students, bosses, parents, duties, meetings, and paperwork. This solves the wrong problem.

@Shamlet @shamlet.bsky.social · Dec 15

So instead of fighting for smaller classes and more time to plan and collaborate with actual humans, districts will jump on this as the bold, innovative solution to teacher workload, and then gradually use the "efficiencies" to ... increase teacher workload. Why are we so gullible and short-sighted

EEF: ChatGPT cuts lesson planning by nearly a third

The saved time did not come at the expense of quality, independent evaluation finds

www.tes.com

14 36 120

Erin Palazzo @erinpalazzo.bsky.social · Dec 12

It also helps inform a bigger conversation over time with Ss about how authors have always been pushing against cultural norms or to track how theater has changed to meet the culture (Greek tragedy v Shakespeare v Fences or Raisin in the Son v Hamilton or Wicked for ex).

1 3

Erin Palazzo @erinpalazzo.bsky.social · Dec 12

(2/2) It’s theater so I firmly believe in watching experts & learning from the production not a painful class reading or as homework. We do close reads of key passages to strategize “How do I understand hard texts?” & then apply that to dense NF articles. But we don’t need 4 plays by him in 8-12!

1 7

Erin Palazzo @erinpalazzo.bsky.social · Dec 12

(1/2) It’s a great way to intro schools of literary criticism & the concept of critical literacy to Ss. I teach 12th Night to 10th. We watch the Globe production staring Rylance & Frye (so good!) & we can look at gender, love, class, etc. easily.

1 2

Erin Palazzo @erinpalazzo.bsky.social · Dec 12

And then you run into these exchanges & I feel like I’m back in peak Twitter with all its snarky goodness

Exchange between two users: one linking CNN article saying most Americans expect Trump to do a good job & the responder pointing out that most Americans read at a sixth grade level (citation included)

Reposted by Erin Palazzo

Marcus Luther @marcusluther.bsky.social · Dec 4

I read this post by @mraleosays.bsky.social going into this week of school—starting a novel in one class, poetry in another—and has pushed me (in the best of ways) to center "doing English" as much as I possibly can.

This matters a lot.

substack.com/home/post/p-...

Doing English vs. Doing School

Parsing differences with the father of English Lit

substack.com

3 12 43

Reposted by Erin Palazzo

John Warner @biblioracle.bsky.social · Dec 3

I think we're probably underestimating the degree of change that will need to happen in education to deal with the presence of GenAI/LLMs. The studies I've read that show positive efficacy for LLM integration tend to measure that efficacy against what I call "schooling," rather than learning.

13 53 170

Erin Palazzo @erinpalazzo.bsky.social · Dec 2

Come join the #iteachEnglish 📖 feed!

Erin Palazzo @erinpalazzo.bsky.social · Nov 27

I have the audio of James plus I picked up AS King’s latest at #NCTE #booksky

A hardcover book on a granite countertop. The book is called Pick the Lock by A.S. King. The cover art is a table setting with a miniature old box TV sitting on top of the plate. A piece of birthday cake is on the TV screen and also in the corner of the cover’s image