Lea Maryanow has been a junior high English teacher for more than ten years. She has also taught at the high school and college level.

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She always looks for real-life writing opportunities for her students, such as writing for the local newspaper, essay contests such as the Patriot’s Pen Essay Contest, or writing for the school newspaper. Her students have won many essay contests. One 8th grader won the essay contest organized by the Fleet Reserve Association on the national level in 2020 and won $2500. 

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Throughout the years, she has developed strategies that help bring abstract reading and writing skills closer to meeting students’ needs. Often teachers assume that students come with certain knowledge and skills to the classroom but that often is not the case.

 

She is going to present these strategies in two presentations at the prestigious NCTE Conference in Boston in November 2024. Additionally, she has been accepted to present at the CATE Conference in Burlingame in Feb./March 2025.

 

Several of her articles that reflect on her teaching practice have been published in the journal California English and on the NY Times Learning Network website. She believes that to be an authentic teacher, she needs to actively read and write herself.