Teen Literacy Tips

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About Teen Literacy Tips
Teen Literacy Tips is an educational resource for those who teach literature to adolescents. If you’re a classroom teacher, a homeschooling parent, or a student teacher, Teen Literacy Tips is designed for you. Major areas include:

• Resources: A roundup of popular articles and multimedia downloads
• Recommended Books: Essential books for the literature teacher, including books about teaching adolescents. If you have a suggestion for a book that’s not listed, use the contact page below to tell me about it.
• Classroom Posters: Bookish art and posters for creating a literate environment
• Teaching Jobs: Looking for work? Check here for postings across the USA and the world. And if you’re looking for quality literature teachers, post your job opening on Teen Literacy Tips–the readers of Teen Literacy Tips are some of the most intelligent, tech-savvy teachers working today.
• The Teacher’s Shopping Network by My Power Mall: I’m offering all readers of Teen Literacy Tips their own online mall to help supplement their teaching income. No gimmicks, no sales classes, no “introductory kits” to buy–just your own online shopping mall with over a thousand stores, like Barnes and Noble, Sears, J.C. Penney, Office Depot, Target, K-Mart, Starbucks and more. It’s simple and costs you absolutely nothing. Find out more by visiting My Power Mall.

About Nick
Nick has been teaching literature since 1990, and in 2001 he was named Distinguished Teacher of the Year by the National Catholic Education Association. He is a husband, father of four, Catholic school teacher and vice principal, and author of ROMAN Reading: 5 Practical Skills for Transforming Your Life through Literature.

He currently teaches eighth grade at All Saints Catholic School in Spokane, Washington, where he has worked since 1991. He is available for workshops, seminars and consultation.

His favorite books are Don Quixote, The Lord of the Rings, and the Master and Commander series by Patrick O’Brian.

Nick’s philosophy of reading is based in part on the following principles:

• The only way to improve as a reader is to read.
• Reading for entertainment and reading for enlightment are not mutually exclusive.
• Reading is “when, with nothing but the power of your own mind, you operate on the symbols before you in such a way that you gradually lift yourself from a state of understanding less to one of understanding more.” Mortimer J. Adler
• “The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self-activity.” Thomas Carlyle
• “Some books are meant to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” Francis Bacon
• “Everything we read stimulates our mind to think, and what we think determines what we desire and desires are the seedbed of our actions. Given this iron law of human nature–from reading to thinking, to desiring, to acting–we are shaping our destiny by the books we choose to have enter our minds through print.” Fr. John Hardon, S.J.
• “He who reads a story only once is condemned to read the same story his whole life.” Roland Barthes
• “Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.” Henry David Thoreau
• “It’s not how many books you get through, it’s how many books get through you.” Mortimer J. Adler

Contact Nick

Feel free to use this form to contact Nick about teaching, literature, advertising on this site, booking him for speaking engagements, or anything else that’s on your mind!

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