About

A Small-town Teacher with a Big Mission

I am Catie Page, a high school English teacher in rural North Carolina. I put my skin into the public education game with one purpose: mentor young people through the lens of instruction in English Language Arts. Probably like many English teachers, I am an avid reader. Nothing beats a story worth sinking teeth into, except maybe a meaty study on educational practices or policy.

Yes, I’m a curriculum junkie.

My approach to pedagogy is rooted in empathy for the standard and unique hurdles adolescents face today. When I was a K-12 student, I faced my own share of challenges (some that were particularly monstrous), but I assumed my experiences were unique. From the other side of the teacher’s desk, I’ve gained more insight into what my students face in their daily lives. The things my adolescent self thought distinguished my upbringing are unfortunately common: depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues; difficult family dynamics; hunger; lack of access to resources (both educational and otherwise); instability. While my classroom cannot cure these ills, I’ve realized that the way in which I structure my courses can help or hinder students facing challenging situations. Of course, this is also true for students with more stable backgrounds.

For many students, school is an endless cycle of deadlines, content, assessments, do-these, do-those… and it’s overwhelming, perhaps unnecessarily so. Teachers face our own whirlwind. We are encouraged (pushed) to use the next greatest thing/tool/strategy, uphold rigor, and well, if you’re reading this, you probably know the rest. Perhaps in pursuit of packing our teaching full of the “good stuff,” we inadvertently pass this whirlwind onto our students, whose plates are already full.

I’ve started this blog in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, during which schools have been upended and made to question what is truly essential when it comes to student learning. LEAs have had to take a long look at the inequities and individual challenges each student and family faces. Communities are in a forced state of reflection.

I’ve been teaching from the third-floor balcony of my apartment now for three weeks, and the questions raised during this unprecedented moment are questions I’ve been wrestling with inside of my own classroom for the past few years. I am on a humble mission to share risks I’ve taken, challenges I’ve accepted, and changes I’ve made in my classroom over the past few years, and continue to make currently. You’ll find these beliefs at the core of my posts:

I don’t believe the schooling experience has to be stressful in order to be effective.

I don’t believe learning needs to be effectively constipated by the continuous influx of the next new thing.

I do believe instruction should be designed first with adolescent executive functioning and social stressors in mind.

I do believe that a practical and simplified approach to teaching can greatly benefit students and that teachers have the ultimate control over what learning looks like.

I sincerely hope you find my content helpful, at the very least. The conversation is worth having, so I’m jumping in.