Hilary Sallick
As an adult basic education teacher with a focus on literacy, I get to explore an array of subject matters and materials with my students, including the reading and writing of poetry. I love this work. Each year I teach, I learn more—about the world, about teaching and learning, about myself, about what reading means.
One year, we studied flowers and plants. What makes a flower a flower? Why do plants have flowers?
The 2020-2021 school year was all online. My students and I figured out Zoom, and we created a website about our work together, Burning Our Brains.
My teaching is grounded in the practice and theory of Eleanor Duckworth, whose work I first encountered in 1990 at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
From Duckworth, I draw these guiding principles:
• Curiosity is at the heart of learning.
• Creativity is a human undertaking.
• All of us have unique and unquantifiable potentials, waiting to grow.
We are authors, artists, scientists, historians, storytellers, researchers, performers, poets.
