The Dickens Approach

Every week I take one piece of my classroom apart and rebuild it so my students own their thinking. Real structures you can run next week. What I'm planning, what works, and what flops.

I teach high school English in the Texas Hill Country. Fourteen years in the classroom, twenty-two years away, and I walked back in January 2026, right as AI cracked education wide open. My students use it. My district hasn't approved it. I'm building a room that works anyway, and I'm showing you all of it, including the parts that flop.

About the name. Charles Dickens wrote during the Industrial Revolution and said plainly what he thought of the schools of his day. The parallel felt right. Then a student told me she wished all her teachers took my approach, and that settled it.

Weekly notes from my classroom: www.thedickensapproach.com
Free resources for teachers: stan.store/thedickensapproach
Instagram and Facebook: @thedickensapproach

Stay curious, stay ethical, stay you.