Associate professor and department chair of English Dr. Felicia Jean Steele teams up with W. W. Norton to preserve the English department. Read how she ensures her English students are prepared for any career and gain access to her career competencies table she provides all her students.
Behind the Scenes: Norton’s Approach to AI in Higher Ed
At Norton, we've been fielding a lot of questions and seeing a lot of buzz about GenAI in higher education. So, we're pulling back the curtain on Norton's approach to meeting the challenges and opportunities of AI through this interview.
Rolling Forward: How THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE Continues to Shape the Classroom
Looking back at the First Edition of The Norton Anthology of African American Literature reminds me that each generation of scholars of African American literature before ours had to reinvent the wheel every time they tried to do research or sat down to plan a class. English literature has been well documented for decades. A student did not want for bibliographies of British scholarship or dictionaries of Shakespearean language, or collections of Elizabethan poetry and edited editions of medieval lyrics. By contrast, there were few comparable volumes for African American literature, and certainly no single book brought together its most important and representative works so that instructors could teach with one authoritative text.
Speak Up! Personalized Support for First-Time Public Speaking Instructors
Assessment and curriculum coordinator Kendall Belopavlovich explains how W.W. Norton’s instructor resources and courseware prepared them for teaching public speaking sooner and allowed them to flourish as a first-time instructor. Read about the three things they couldn’t teach without.
History as Exploration: Guiding Students Beyond the Familiar
I realized that these students are interested in the world in all its multiplicity; they don’t know where to start. The history of exploration provides a path for them to engage with the world through a familiar lens without entirely leaving their comfort zone. So now I try to complicate and expand rather than to dismiss.
Five Tips for Navigating Your First Dual Credit Course
Morgan Cline is a 2025 graduate of Teays Valley High School in Ashville, Ohio, currently studying aviation and music education at The Ohio State University. Imagine starting your first year of college. New school, new friends, new living arrangements, potentially a new city to call home, new activities—new everything. For many, this is the biggest …
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“Digital Detox”: Using Norton Critical Editions To Promote Critical Thinking
The Norton Learning Blog has recently featured several posts that offer suggestions for generating greater classroom success by integrating ChatGPT and similar machine-learning-applications. (I find the latter a more accurate—and less anthropomorphizing—term than AI.) However, this particular post goes out to all who—for pedagogical, or numerous other reasons—search for the grail of LLM-free spaces.
Storying the Classroom: Why ELA Is the Perfect Place for Ethnic Studies
Since the fall of 2021, I’ve taught a class called English 12 Ethnic Cultures, a course designed specifically to incorporate Ethnic Studies principles into English Language Arts. After doing this work for some time, I am convinced that the Language Arts classroom is a perfect place for this kind of work. English teachers are natural storytellers, and our classrooms can be the place where students’ own stories emerge.
“Write What’s Not Fair”: On Obsession, Paradox, and Permission in the Classroom
Passionate student writers rarely lack ideas, but instructors can help them narrow those ideas down by choosing to write what makes them feel the most. Authors Matthew Clark Davison and Alice LaPlante instruct students to write what’s “not fair.” Unresolved emotions, from hatred to love, offer great fuel to new writers seeking direction.
My First Year Teaching with a Global Approach: A Few Practical Tips
In Fall 2024, I moved to a new city, started a new job, and began to teach a new set of introductory art history courses. I had to become familiar with a large amount of content fairly quickly, and figure out how much to include and what to cut out. I used Thames & Hudson’s The History of Art: A Global View textbook and found many of its features to be helpful time savers in transitioning to teaching with a global approach.