To the ELA Nerds in the Bronx I Met with Yesterday

I had the pleasure of sitting in on an ELA team meeting in a middle school in the Bronx the other day. It’s never a guarantee that teams will jibe, but this team was just a joy: smart, caring for students, dedicated to growing–and total ELA nerds. I wanted to share some of my nerdier resources, but didn’t want to mess with their meeting’s flow.  Instead, I’ve posted here some of the things that cut straight to my humanities-loving heart:

• Lit Hub: Just what it says, this site is a great way to ensure curated literary writing in your stream across genres as well as interviews with authors–and it has edge.
• Book Riot: Similar in mission as Lit Hub, Book Riot includes more multimodal content like videos and podcasts–all books, all the time.
• Electric Literature: The brains behind Lit Hub, Electric Literature’s mission is to “expand the influence of literature in popular culture by fostering lively and innovative literary conversations and making exceptional writing accessible to new audiences.” Love.
• Brainpickings: Beautifully curated selections from the arts, science, literature, and beyond. Few cultural blogs can rival the work of Maria Popova.
• YAWednesday: Young adult literature and education professor Steve Bickmore has amassed quite the cult following as he spreads the good word about YA lit, including how best to teach it.
• English Companion Ning: A community of tens of thousands of ELA teachers with very active groups and discussion boards for every topic imaginable.
• Goodreads: I’ll be honest, I never got into GoodReads. But other bibliolaters I admire swear by this book discussion community.
• Literary Gift Company: For when you are feeling bookish and looking to burn some cash.

Keep up the excellent wordy work.