Author: Neil Simpkins

When I joined the English department at a small, private, Catholic high school, I was nervous. My previous experiences had been very different: I’d taught previously as a public school teacher, where I struggled daily, and as an idealist graduate teaching associate in an award-winning freshman writing program. I’d even been selected in graduate school to teach an online section of digital rhetoric and writing. But at the private high school, despite exorbitant tuition, digital tools were suspect and nonexistent. The school’s barely visible BYOD program meant that students used phones, textbooks, iPads, and whatever else to learn how to…