Will you be presenting at the 2025 NCTE Annual Convention, November 20-23 in Denver? If so, please email the details to bltn@middlebury.edu and we'll include you in a directory of BLTN presenters. 

BLSE and BLTN will have a booth in the vendor area. If you're attending, please stop by and say hello. 

BLTN and BLSE are pleased to announce this year's Change Action Grant awardees. Twelve applicants were awarded from a highly competitive field. Congratulations to this year's recipients.

Additionally, the Sabin Family Endowed Urban Education Innovations Fund provided support for Angela Jones (NYC) to participate in WTS, and to Sara Taggart (Columbus, OH) to create a teacher and student collaborative literary magazine to provide "a creative space to address issues they experience as members of the education community."

Change Action Grants are made possible by Middlebury College's Kathryn Wasserman Davis Collaborative in Conflict Transformation.

Editor's note: In each month's newsletter, Kurt Ostrow will share teaching ideas gleaned from BLTN fellows. We hope you'll find these useful. Reach out to Kurt at ostrowk@gmail.com if you have a teaching resource to share with BLTN colleagues. 

This unit, developed in collaboration with Rebecca Poyatt with the hopes of an exchange in Spring 2025, is provided through the QR code below. In it, students are encouraged to examine the myths of the Confederacy’s Lost Cause as well as the Myth of Manifest Destiny. By first examining the relationship between the myth propagated by Stone Mountain Monument in Georgia and that of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, students develop a critical understanding of art and the stories it tells, both overtly and covertly. Further, students develop writing and research skills that equip them with the capability to critique art and media around them for the purpose of seeing the world more clearly and sharing that vision with fellow citizens. 

Thanks to collaboration with Rebecca, the work done in conjunction with Craig Maravich and, the community developed in his 2024 course, and the funding made possible through BLTN’s Change Curriculum, my students enhanced their writing skills last fall. More importantly however, they saw the world more clearly than they did before, as I hope yours may too! 

-Nick Miller teaches at the Millennium School in San Francisco

BLTN NextGen’s Youth Advisory Board is a group of extraordinary young people charged with setting network priorities and advising on communication, publications, budgets, grant funding, and agendas for cross-site meetings. The Board meets monthly, online, via Zoom. Contact any of the Youth Advisory Board members for more information on their work, or contact Tom McKenna, BLTN NextGen Director, about the network as a whole. Meet the 2025-26 Youth Advisory Board!

One weekend. 13-15 hours of professional development.

Join us in Vermont this February for the Bread Loaf Winter Institute, a weekend teacher professional development workshop that will empower you to deepen your teaching practice with innovative, relevant workshops and activities.

Teachers will come to our mountain campus in Ripton, Vermont from February 27 - March 1, 2026 and earn 13-15 professional development hours though workshops and creative exercises led by renowned Bread Loaf faculty and focused on this year’s theme: Expanding the English Classroom.

Workshop focuses for 2026 include...

When the session concludes, you can choose to cross-country or downhill ski at Middlebury’s Rikert Nordic Center or Snowbowl at a discounted rate. Participants can stay on campus in our historic Inn or commute to Ripton.

Discover more on our Winter Institute website or reach out to us at blse@middlebury.edu with your questions.

We hope you will join us!

Are you interested in co-publishing an article with your students in a special issue of the BLTN Journal this May? BLTN editors Tom McKenna and Kurt Ostrow are ready to help guide you, from concept to finished product. Please reach out to us. No idea is too tentative! We can help you hone the concept and find a process and format. Send an email to get the conversation started: tpmckenn@middlebury.edu and /or ostrowk@gmail.com. 

Read an introductory letter from the Conflict Transformation Collaborative's new Executive Director, Dr. Netta Avineri, read how BLTN colleagues are organizing under "Pillar One" of the College-wide program, and learn how other aspects of the College are learning and collaborating to "create spaces for partnership and community in an ever-changing world" in the Fall 2025 Conflict Transformation Collaborative newsletter. 

Dr. Avineri (above) shares this exciting opportunity for youth leadership, through the Institute for Citizens and Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson Foundation). Note the November 3 deadline for applications. 

Join Dr. Eric Prichard's Community Literacy Collaborative's upcoming symposium. "Held virtually on October 20th and 21st, our 2025 symposium will explore how the interplay between the creative and critical (henceforth, 'creative-critical') can bolster literacies scholarship, pedagogical practices, political and activist expression, and community formation and transformation." Learn more. 

Congratulations to Mackensi Crenshaw of the Francis Parker School of Louisville who published "Black Youth Futures: A Song for You: Black Music as Praxis" in the July, 2025 issue of English Journal. Mackensi is a prolific writer and publisher. Read about her oral literatures and podcasting project in the Spring/Summer 2025 issue of Bread Loaf Teacher Network Journal. 

While "What happens at Bread Loaf doesn't stay at Bread Loaf," as Professor David Wandera is quick to remind us, much of what happens in BLTN happens away from Bread Loaf, in your classrooms and communities. We would love to receive and share action shots of your students participating in BLTN-related collaborations. (Please be sure to obtain permissions.) Send photos via email to Tom McKenna at tpmckenn@middlebury.edu . 

Please notify us of accomplishments you’d like to share in the monthly newsletter. Contact Tom McKenna if you’re interested in publishing in the annual BLTN Journal.

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