With Honors

My seniors have spent what feels like forever in our unit study of Macbeth. My country girls wanted to finish the month by making sure we talked about the feature of Macbeth that always draws the crowd in. Witches. With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongside our other podcast, Second Stage , on major platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. Also, throw...

It’s Halloween week, my favorite time of year. And it’s probably the season in which my classroom comes into its prime. But the groundwork for this started all the way back in Week 1 with these sophomores. This is the week I teach students how to analyze the techniques of suspense in movies and literature. And this week’s episode is a walkthrough of my lesson for teaching suspense. I call it: The...

It’s Homecoming Week at our rural high school. And this week, we wanted to open the doors and let you listen in too. With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongside our other podcast, Second Stage , on major platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. Also, throw some love at our brother podcast with Drew Haston, A Deadman’s Books . You can find him on Spotif...

This week, a dialogue with my students and co-teachers about an epiphany they caused me to have about Banquo in Shakespeare’s Macbeth . For years, I taught Banquo as a noble, selfless father figure who intended to get his son to safety away from the tyrant. But this week, my AP Lit seniors caused me to realize how selfish (and foolish) his actions are. If that's true of Banquo, what about us? What...

This week I got a chance to sit down with Lily, one of my afternoon seniors, to talk about her essay. Lily’s topic explored why Beowulf still matters in 2026, especially here in rural America. My girl Lily is a proud redneck, a backroads girl through and through, with a clear voice and a firm idea of what she wants to say. With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongsi...

A crew of my sophomore ladies undertook their own mini-odyssey this week, to travel around school and discover their own answers. Isn’t The Odyssey more than just a man’s adventure -- isn’t it a woman’s tale too? And what about the representation of women in The Odyssey ? Alice, Mikayla, Adelaide, and Ella voyaged out from the kingdom shores of Room 117. And with mics in hand, they ventured out on...

In this episode, I take you all into my classroom to explore how I teach characterization and one of the earliest projects we do. So, before you listen, try the exercise yourself. What do you already know—or think you know—about a guy named Coach Brad? With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongside our other podcast, Second Stage , on major platforms like Spotify, Ap...

In this installment, our book reviewer Courtney Reads It All takes a holiday with Death, who also takes a holiday. She’s reading Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurts by Ben Reeves, a novel that takes its title from a Kurt Vonnegut book. Courtney Reads It All is presented by Free Zone Radio. You can find it every Friday this season. Be sure to check out our other shows With Honors and Second...

One of my dearest students comes back to the table to discuss social commentary, the right to life, and question each other's views. With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongside our other podcast, Second Stage , on major platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. Also, throw some love at our brother podcast with Drew Haston, A Deadman’s Books . You can fi...

In this third episode from Courtney Reads It All , our book reviewer discuss her next 5-star read: Barbara Truelove’s She’s a Doll . The book seems half-inspired by Grady Hendrix, half-inspired by “Goodbye Earl.” A woman dies before her time and her spirit comes to inhabit a doll. Together with her lifelong friend, they seek to mete out some posthumous justice to the cruel man who has damaged thei...

This season, I’m going to incorporate some walkthroughs of actual lessons I teach during the year, and to lead off that series, I’m beginning with the basics: teaching plot. We explore the fundamentals of the plot diagram, exposition, climax, resolution and denouement, as well as the finer points of suspense and conflict. More importantly, this is a walkthrough in WHY we are still teaching plot at...

In this second installment of Courtney Reads It All , our book reviewer discuss her great love for Paul Tremblay — and her unfortunate disappointment in his newest novel, Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep . But while she might DNF the book (and possibly skip ahead to read the ending by itself), she wonders if she’ll discover that the ending merits going back and reading the rest of the story. Co...

As a teacher, it’s inevitable. There are certain students who become fixtures of your classroom. Alizabeth and Lily have always been two of the most memorable, funniest, talented people from my classes. They made videos that captured the soul of that class. They ended their sophomore year and senior year by gifting me a compilation video of our memories together. And during their senior year, they...

Each week, our friend Courtney Ferris reviews a book. This week she takes us through Sally Hepworth’s 2025 novel Mad Mabel , a darkly funny mystery about two kinds of people no one ever expects to be murderers: little girls and old ladies. You can find more of her reviews on Courtney Reads It All , on both Instagram and TikTok. This episode also features “Ambient Bit Two” by Tolset Music and a pia...

We’re kicking off Season 3 with this two-part episode, and the conversation that launched with sophomore English now lands with AP Lit. Why read these works over the summer? Why read them at all? How are texts like The Kite Runner or The Importance of Being Earnest a foundation or a framework for what we do this school year? Moreso, how are they a framework for the lives we lead outside the classr...

Why do a summer reading assignment? And why read these two pieces? Why—what do they have to do with a school year of sophomore literature? With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongside our other podcast, Second Stage , on major platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. Also, throw some love at our brother podcast with Drew Haston, A Deadman’s Books . You...

What’s the best way for readers to approach The Odyssey now in 2026? Audiences can watch the film, but are they missing a richness informed by the actual epic? And if that’s true, which translation, or which publication of it? And do those still play well with readers today? Is the graphic novel appropriate for high school readers? What about Nolan’s movie? Are these useful, suitable, dare I say l...

Each year I assign a summer reading assignment for my Honors sophomore English class and for my AP Lit course. In this episode, I do a walkthrough of my summer reading assignment. If you’re a student, this can be a helpful talkthrough of my vision for the assignment, my expectations, why I think it’s important. And if you’re a teacher, maybe this can be helpful for you in considering your own appr...

This week we feature a teacher's walkthrough of our assigned summer reading: Paolo Coelho’s The Alchemist . Our friend Drew Haston discusses his important takeaways of the book and several things he would consider pairing with it. With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongside our other podcast, Second Stage , on major platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouT...

In this episode, my co-teacher Hannah and I spent the day at McKay’s Used Books in Nashville. Part of our fun-day at the bookstore was an English teacher side quest: Find 5 books you wish you could teach if there were no constraints, no arguments, no intervening curriculum management. The only rule was that the book had to physically be on the McKay’s bookshelf. Everything else was fair game. What...

We continue our conversations about The Big Summer Read— The Lord of the Rings —by taking a trip to Tennessee Tech University and spending the morning with Dr. Shirley Laird. She’s a beloved, long-time veteran professor of English, specializing in courses for sophomores, teaching Shakespeare, Chaucer, Tolkien, Anglo-Saxon studies, and grammar. Dr. Laird is fondly remembered for her delicate and er...

This week, my co-teacher Drew Haston and I discuss The Odyssey and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a film whose setting and music and characters resonate with those of us in the South—a people forever clinging to the notion of home, hospitality, and old timey truths. With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongside our other podcast, Second Stage , on major platforms like...

This week, we joined forces with Drew at A Deadman’s Books to present the first check-in episode of the Big Summer Read: Fellowship of the Ring. With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongside our other podcast, Second Stage , on major platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. Also, throw some love at our brother podcast with Drew Haston, A Deadman’s Books...

The Odyssey is a story of many things, and for me, it’s ultimately an adventure story of fathers and sons, the story of a man spending years of anguish trying to undo his mistakes and just get back home to the ones who love him. For Father’s Day weekend, I sit with my son and we discuss both The Odyssey and his summer reading assignment, How to Read Literature like a Professor . With Honors is a F...

Over the summer, my Honors and AP English students are asked to read a text in common. In this week's episode, Drew Haston and I are exploring Thomas C. Foster's helpful guide, How to Read Literature Like a Professor . With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongside our other podcast, Second Stage , on major platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. https:/...