Two short stories that excel at this are Evan Hunter’s The Last Spin and John Collier’s The Chaser. Though vastly different in tone, both texts give students opportunities to examine human motivation, peer pressure, manipulation, and personal responsibility. These themes are not only deeply engaging for teens, but also crucial for building empathy and moral reasoning skills.

Reclaiming Your Energy So You Can Keep Inspiring Others Teachers are known for giving everything they have—time, energy, patience, and...

While banning AI outright isn’t realistic—or necessarily desirable—ELA teachers can get ahead of the problem by crafting “AI-resistant” tasks. These are assessments that emphasize personal voice, lived experience, process, and creativity, making it much harder (and far less useful) for students to outsource their work to machines.