"Providing space for our students to learn alongside each other’s dreams is an act of teaching. Collaborating to create what once wasn’t from the threads of our own imaginations: that is an act of learning. The waking world’s reams and rubrics drive much of what we do as English teachers, but we do not need to drown in a deluge of disconnected assessment. Instead, in the spirit of shared imagination, I invite us to take our and our students’ dreams seriously. For the 2025 NCTE Annual Convention, let’s embrace the idyllic possibilities of play, of storytelling, of asking what if and what if and what if." -NCTE Call for Presentations

Please consider presenting your BLTN work at NCTE '25 in Denver. Proposals  are due January 29, 2025!  (More about the theme here. Instructions here.)

We would love to see a collection of BLTN presenters, and we invite accepted BLTN presenters to apply for travel support via the June/July Dixie Goswami Action Grants. Reach out if you need support with your NCTE proposal. 

Note: This is the first in what we hope will be a monthly feature in the newsletter. Kurt Ostrow (MA '22), BLTN Journal Assistant Editor, would love to hear your ideas for future resource / teaching idea exchanges. Contact Kurt at ostrowk@gmail.com if you have a teaching resource you'd like to share with BLTN colleagues. 
-----
In AP Lang with juniors, I teach a January unit on reviews and recommendations—one of my favs! We start by writing short delights styled after Ross Gay (check out "Marfa Lights") and reviews on a five-star scale inspired by John Green's The Anthropocene Reviewed (I like "Academic Decathlon" and "Auld Lang Syne"). For Gay, we dissect his prose (full of short clauses and long sentences, for example, and the punctuation that supports them), then imitate it. This imitation pushes their craft beautifully! We also look at two essays about emotions: Audre Lorde's "On the Uses of Anger" and Zadie Smith's "Joy." (Another text I ran out of time for is Aimee Nezhukumamatatil's World of Wonders.) The in-class essay is an AP argument prompt about something that's overrated, and the final project is the New York Times' curated list contest. Feel free to borrow the unit wholesale or work one of these texts/exercises into an existing unit. - Kurt Ostrow / Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School / Philadelphia, PA

If you haven’t yet done so, it’s time to re-enroll in BLSE!  Summer 2025 re-enrollment forms are now available on your portal, and dates and fees are posted on the website. See the Special Funding page for fellowships and scholarships, including the new Global Change Fellowships for California Teachers. The full list of 2025 courses and faculty is now live on the website. 

We ask current BLTN fellows to submit their mid-year reports by February 15, 2025. These reports help us to make connections across the meeting, plan content, and share your learning and work with fellowship donors. BLTN report forms may be found here. 

We’re happy to receive and share this update from Alesandra Zsiba (MA’21) founding artist and director of The Identity Project, a school-based SEL intervention in identity-based documentary storytelling for underserved Native American and Latinx youth throughout New Mexico. Alesandra reports that the project has expanded its reach and focus to rural Alaska: “As my work has iterated and transformed, I’ve established a new partnership with an Alaska Native Tribal Association. Chugachmiut serves seven tribes of the Chugach region, and together we will be seeding an iteration of The Identity Project in two high-need districts across the Kenai Peninsula. I’m very proud to share that our partnership was just awarded a federal Department of Education EIR grant for $5 million across five years. This national recognition speaks directly to the value of The Identity Project and the visionary leadership of Chugachmiut’s Tribal Education Division.”

For more information, reach out to Alesandra at  alesandra.zsiba@gmail.com 

Bread Loaf offers Bridge Scholarships for Winter Institute participants to attend a BLSE summer session. Read more. 

Ready for another enriching weekend at Bread Loaf? This year, the Winter Institute will be February 21-23, 2025 and you can earn 13 professional development hours though workshops and creative exercises. This year’s theme is Reading Across Difference, and we have a brand-new slate of engaging workshops on offer.

You will learn how interactive performance-based teaching can work in your classroom and hear from youth about the impact of community-based learning. When the session concludes, you can choose to cross-country ski at Middlebury’s Rikert Nordic Center or downhill ski at the Middlebury Snowbowl at discounted rates! 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.

As we approach Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we leave you with a resource from Smithsonian Magazine, in which "Smithsonian educators share approaches to expand classroom lessons and student understanding of this great civil rights leader."

Please notify us of accomplishments you’d like to share in the monthly newsletter. We're also interested in promoting reader resource sharing. Do you have a unit you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to discuss? Be in touch. 

Follow BLTN on Social Media

Follow BLTN NextGen on Social Media