Teaching Students What To Do Instead of Asking the Chatbot

By Sarah Zerwin, CCIRA Conference Featured Speaker

“What do you notice?’ 

This is where my instruction starts, with a simple invitation to my students to point out the small things they notice in any kind of text. From this low-stakes starting place, students build their own meaning out of complexity following a three step meaning making process. 

Step one is to Start Small with what you notice.

Step two is to Seek Connections to grow your thinking. 

Step three is to Take Action by deciding what you’ve figured out and do something with it. 

The Original Thought Annotation (OTA) is the most frequent Step One strategy in my classroom. On a humble sticky note, students jot down a specific text detail that grabbed their attention and then a sentence or two about what they think about it. 

To Seek Connections, my students use rambling, rough writing to explore connections across a few separate OTAs, and they also use conversation with their classmates to explore and build their ideas.

Step Three looks different depending on the class. My IB English juniors take all the ideas they’ve built about our shared texts in Steps One and Two and use that thinking as the content of their official IB assessments. My sophomores take the thinking they’ve built to help them decide what they want to write about in informal weekly timed writings and in process papers toward the end of each unit. 

We loop through these three steps again and again and again, offering students repeated practice in a meaning making process that shows them how to make sense of anything complex. (See my book, Step Aside: Strategies for Student-Driven Learning with Secondary Readers and Writers, for many more details about the Three Step Meaning Making Process.)

My Gmail inbox now asks if I want it to summarize an email thread for me. I have a teaching-focused AI tool at school I can use to generate instructional plans, emails to parents, and multiple choice reading comprehension questions. I can put a sizable collection of student responses into a chatbot and ask it to discern the top five themes in my students’ thinking, instantly completing a qualitative data analysis task that would take me much longer than the chatbot’s few seconds. In short, we have new tools that can save us significant time if we choose to use them, and so do our students. We and they may choose to use those tools even when we really should do the thinking on our own. It’s more critical than ever that we teach our students concrete strategies for figuring things out, using their own words to navigate and explore their thinking. 

The temptation to offload thinking work to the robot brains in AI chatbots is real. Our students are hungry for guidance to help think through it. I want to create reasons in my students’ minds that will combat the temptation. After reading this open letter from a high school student to ChatGPT, my students now might think, using the chatbot might make me less creative. From reading this op-ed from a college professor, my students might stop and think, using the chatbot might get in the way of me developing some really important foundational thinking skills. 

But even with these reasons floating around in their thinking, they still might opt to offload the hard thinking work to a chatbot, especially if they’re not sure where to start. That’s the impact of a simple strategy that yields rich, student-generated thinking. A strategy they can use when they’re trying to make sense of any complexity, like a conversation they have with someone or a news report they read or see. This meaning making work is not just for poems and novels in classrooms. The reading and writing work we do in ELA classrooms is skill building for life. 

A simple three step meaning making process teaches students what to do on their own, without the AI crutch. 

The challenge is convincing students that they can make sense of complexity and that what seems like extra work up against the lightning speed of a chatbot is worth their time. 

Our students are hungry for our guidance. Let’s offer it to them. Not just guidance about new and evolving AI tools, but also what to do instead of asking the chatbot to make sense of things for them.  

It’s simple. Start here: What do you notice? 

Sarah M. Zerwin teaches language arts at Fairview High School in Boulder, Colorado. She is the author of Point-Less: An English Teacher’s Guide to More Meaningful Grading and Step Aside: Strategies for Student-Driven Learning with Secondary Readers and Writers. See more at sarahmzerwin.com.

School Morning 2026

By Louise Borden, CCIRA Conference Speaker

Last August, my friend Patrick Allen invited me to write a blog post for CCIRA as I’ll be speaking to teachers this February about my work as a writer of books for young readers. The other posts I’ve read on the CCIRA website are by amazing educators who are mentors to teachers across the country. Their words are inspiring ones about engaging students, growing readers and writers, and designing strategies for lifelong learning.

I immediately worried: Whatever could I offer in a post to veteran teachers?

Due to travels and procrastination, I delayed in sending Patrick a post. Then, today, while watching a huge snowstorm from the windows of my writing room, a storm that’s affecting most of our nation, I at last found words to share with you.

Over the past decades, I’ve visited hundreds of schools across America from Maine to Florida to California. As a writer and as a visiting author, I consider engaging with students and teachers, and walking their hallways, to be an important and inspiring part of my life. Because of this, eight or so of my books have school settings. Additionally, several of my historical picture books mention school in their stories. And . . .always . . . teachers are my heroes.

In 2012, my husband and I were living in the Washington, D.C. metro area when the tragedy at Sandy Hook began to unfold on a December school morning at 9:35 a.m.

After hearing the terrible news, I recall standing outside of Union Station and looking at the American flags fluttering in the breeze around the entrance drive. And I thought about all the students and all the first graders I’d had the honor of meeting during my author visits. That very December, our oldest grandchild was a first grader – in Colorado.

Since that day, I’ve kept a list of the names of the Sandy Hook first graders near my desk. And on that paper are the names of the teachers and principal lost that morning. Over the years, while our country rushed ahead into the future, the list was my steady way of remembrance. As we sadly know, other tragic school shootings have followed.

Both of our daughters (one is a teacher) have children of school age . . . and each morning when they drop off our grandkids at school in Denver and Atlanta, there are hugs or quick goodbyes with everyone ready for the adventure of the day.

All of us – you in the teaching community – and I as a visitor walking across countless school parking lots to enter through those front doors, have seen this same morning interaction: the goodbyes and the love, between parents and their children, before the day unfolds for teachers and students.

I’ve been thinking a lot in the past few weeks about Renee Good – born in Colorado Springs – who was fatally shot in Minneapolis on January 7 after dropping off her 6 year-old son Timmy at his school.

January 7 was a Wednesday, and I assume it was a normal post-holiday vacation morning for Timmy as he said goodbye to his mom . . . a boy who had lost his father just two years before. Timmy probably entered his school with a sense of safety and familiarity and walked up the hall to his kindergarten room, maybe with classmates in their puffy winter coats beside him, chattering away with their backpacks full of kindergarten dreams . . . or maybe Timmy was alone as he hurried up the hall. Sixyear-olds always have an energy and an eagerness in their steps, yes?

I don’t know the name of Timmy’s teacher . . . or what that teacher’s classroom looks like. I don’t know anything about Timmy’s school.

I only know that Timmy’s mother, an English major who wrote poetry, was shot in the head at 9:37 a.m. Central Time . . . while Timmy was in his classroom, or maybe he was lining up with other kindergarteners to go to Library or Art.

What was he doing in that tragic moment . . . in the routine of a school morning . . . snow scattered across the landscape outside his classroom windows?

In that moment, at 9:37 a.m., Timmy’s entire educational life was a bright horizon before him.

This winter . . . kindergarten.

Then next year . . . first grade!

Each year unfolding into the upper grades.

On January 7, Timmy’s future held many teachers . . . waiting for him in their classrooms in the years to come.

I can only imagine the deep caring and love that any teacher must offer to a student who has lost his or her parent. My own dad at age 12 and his younger brother at 11 lost their father to a sudden heart attack. I’ve never reflected until today, while writing this post, on what teachers at Beechwood Elementary during that week in 1931 said to the two Walker brothers when they returned to school after the days of mourning an unexpected death.

What are the words to offer a child who is stricken with shock or grief or fear?

Thank goodness that today, in 2026, we have school counselors across the nation who have the training and the hearts to bring comfort and courage to bereaved students and their teachers.

Perhaps some of you have had to be that teacher . . . enveloping your students with compassion and patience after they’ve endured a loss at a young age.

The news stories and the politicians will debate videos and accounts and the sad moments before and after what happened at 9:27 a.m. Central Time to a 37-year-old Minneapolis mom, born in Colorado.

But we, those who will attend CCIRA in February, work in schools. It’s a true honor to learn with, and from, children. Each school morning, we walk down hallways echoing with the voices of our staff and our students.

And sometimes we walk past the classrooms of kindergarteners who are just learning what the routines and rhythms of education are all about.

We’ll remember not the politics of January 7, 2026 but in our hearts we’ll carry Timmy’s teachers, our colleagues who’ll be beside him in the days and years to come as he continues his journey of education.

And I will say prayers of thanksgiving that TEACHERS are the ones who shine lights of hope and healing in this world. Your weekdays are crammed minute by minute – and with schedules and responsibilities that neighbors and family have no clue about.

On this January Sunday, as the predicted big snow (yes, it is now here!) is sweeping across many states and school parking lots, I offer you no strategies for reading, no wise words from my work as the author of 33 children’s books.

But I thank you for being dedicated teachers – who show up on school mornings before your students are dropped off by their moms and dads with a hug or a smile or words of love.

Thank you for your classrooms, your dedication, and your passion. Let us all together beam courage across the snowy miles to Minnesota to bring healing to Timmy and to the staff at his school. In this moment on a school morning, in this one historic and tragic moment, you too, are this boy’s teacher.

I look forward to meeting you this February in Denver . . . and thanking you in person for your life work with America’s children, leading them to literacy with love.

“To consider yourself a writer as you move about the world is . . .a beautiful way to live, a form of open-mindedness, even in terrible times. Here life is, going on all around. It is a form of writing itself; if you do it, you are a writer. It’s likely to lead to putting words down on a page, at least a few, but even if it doesn’t, it can make you feel alive. Lucky. Luck you can make yourself.” – Elizabeth McCracken from A LONG GAME – Notes on Writing Fiction

Louise Borden graduated from Denison University with a degree in history. She taught first graders and preschoolers and later was a part-owner of a bookstore in Cincinnati, Ohio. In addition to writing children’s books, she also speaks regularly to young students about the writing process. Her books include Good Luck, Mrs. K!, which won the Christopher Medal, and The A+ Custodian. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, and you can visit her at LouiseBorden.com.

Writing Ideas: Keeping it Real

by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater, 2026 Conference Featured Author

Right now, as millions flirt with AI partners, discuss suicide with ChatGPT, doomscroll, laugh at fake videos of bunnies jumping on trampolines, soothe loneliness by talking with Alexa, and settle in for hours of gaming in both dingy basements and luxurious leather chairs, snow falls softly outside. One cardinal swoops across a cold winter sky.  This small, feathered flash of red may go unnoticed though; many of us are looking at digital windows instead of out of glass ones. Our bodies are in the real world, but our minds are in the cloud. 

As writing teachers, we show our charges how to analyze mentor texts, try craft moves, and study sentence structure. And while writing craft matters, it is important to remember that literature does not exist to be deconstructed. We humans write to share ideas, explore feelings, teach concepts, tell stories, and express opinions. Humans write to connect with other humans. Artists write and paint and dance and sing about their ideas. Yet often, our young writers lament, “I don’t have any ideas.”

In this very-virtual time in history, we must remind our students that the concrete world of our senses is a meaningful and worthwhile place to spend time and examine. It is our job as teachers of writing to help students find ideas by (re)connecting them to the actual, physical world of planet earth. How do we help our digital-native students believe they can conjure and elaborate on their own ideas without relying on Gemini?

Turn Tech Off When Not in Use – We can turn interactive whiteboards on when we use them and turn them off when we are finished using them. This models intention – we turn technology on when we need to use it. Screens need not constantly stare at us.

Read Books Straight Through – We can read whole poems and books straight through, allowing students to get lost in texts. By reading whole texts aloud, we give students new worlds to inhabit and imagine. Listening to whole texts focuses and lengthens attention and builds empathy. We can always return to these texts later to evaluate craft moves or character traits.

Visit Nature Outside – We can take children outside to make shadows, gather oak leaves, watch a robin look for worms, reminding these children that our world is beautiful, interesting, and worth learning about. We can teach them the names of a few local plants and animals so that they will recognize and care about these plants and animals as fellow living things.

Bring Nature Inside – We can set up a wee nature table, inviting students to share found shells and stones and pinecones, helping them notice and wonder about pocket-sized, free treasures. Many of the best treasures, after all, are free, and free is for everyone.

Keep Notebooks – We can write for a few minutes each day, by hand, in paper notebooks. By doing so, we help students develop agency as they realize one need not be plugged in to create. Writing in notebooks, students realize that thoughts come through the motion of a hand on the blankness of a page with the inkness of a pen.

Be Present – We can turn our own phones off when in our students’ presence. When we do this, we silently say, “I will not be distracted from this important time we have together.”

Make Art – We can make things with our hands, folding origami stars or painting with watercolors during a ten minute transition. Students deserve to know that their growing bodies can manipulate materials in the 3-D world as well as their thumbs can manipulate pixels in the 2-D world.

Make Peace with Quiet – We can provide a few moments of quiet, allowing students to put their heads down or close their eyes or breathe deeply. While they (and we) may be uncomfortable at first, they (and we) will come to trust that every quiet space need not be filled with beeping and Googling. Brains think new thoughts when given such space. 

Engage Students’ Senses – We can offer our students tiny sensory experiences: smelling cinnamon, touching sheepskin, tasting cider. While video game characters fly and shoot aliens, human bodies touch and taste and smell and hear and see. We cannot control the hours of online time students spend at home, but we can feed their senses as we look at light through a prism or pass around a scrap of velvet. We can remind students that human beings have senses and that ideas come through these senses.

Listen and Model – When students say “I don’t know what to write,” we can listen. Rather than suggesting topics, we can share bits of our own real lives and pages from our own paper notebooks, modeling how we find ideas through the act of writing, modeling how we allow our thinking to change and do not expect perfect ideas to arrive fully formed.  We can trust that – through our trust – young writers can and will welcome ideas of their own.

Yes, AI is everywhere. Yes, many parents know students’ grades before students do, and many young people are digitally tracked wherever they go. Yes, children and adults both play hours of video games daily. Yes, it is difficult to know what is real and what is not real online. It’s all true. But so are cardinals true. So is snow true. And a most precious role of the writing teacher is to point to cardinals, to encourage students to touch snow. For real.

For ideas’ sake.

Amy Ludwig VanDerwater is author of several poetry and picture books for children, including Forest Has a Song, With My Hands: Poems About Making Things,Write! Write! Write!, and her latest, The Sound of Kindness. A former elementary school teacher and longtime writing teacher with a master’s degree from Teachers College, Columbia University, Amy is also author of the professional book Poems Are Teachers: How Studying Poetry Strengthens Writing in All Genres. She has blogged for children at  The Poem Farm since 2010 and is interested in your ideas about keeping it real in education. Find Amy online HERE, and watch for her forthcoming book, John and Betsy, a story told through poems.

Purposeful Read-Alouds to Build Comprehension

By Katie Kelly, 2026 CCIRA Featured Speaker

With the increased attention on phonics instruction, we cannot overlook the essential purpose of reading as construction of meaning. Comprehension and critical thinking skills must be prioritized alongside foundational skills such as phonics, while also honoring and centering students’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds (Compton-Lilly et al., 2023; Duke et al., 2021). Expanding beyond narrow ideas of reading instruction to include more robust and comprehensive approaches increases students’ comprehension, engagement, and joy when reading.

Purposeful Read-Alouds

Purposeful daily teacher read-alouds serve as an easy and effective approach to supporting key aspects of reading development and engagement. Read-alouds enhance language comprehension by building students’ background knowledge, academic vocabulary, and understanding of sentence structure—key aspects that contribute to overall reading comprehension. In addition, read-alouds provide opportunities for adults to model bridging processes such as fluent reading, self-regulation, and strategic thinking (Duke & Cartwright, 2021). By modeling their own think aloud processes before, during, and after reading, adults can demonstrate how proficient readers monitor comprehension, ask questions, and make meaning from text. Thus, read-alouds not only strengthen essential language comprehension skills but also promote the cognitive and metacognitive habits necessary for independent, joyful reading.  

Intentionally Selecting Read-Alouds 

When selecting texts for read alouds, choose books that serve as mirrors, reflecting students’ identities, interests, and cultures allowing children to see themselves reflected, affirming their identities, making them feel valued, and increasing their interest in reading. It’s also important to select books offering windows into different stories, experiences, and perspectives to expand children’s worldviews (Bishop, 1990). When read-alouds intentionally represent a range of experiences and perspectives, children develop cultural awareness, a sense of belonging, empathy, and a deeper sense of shared humanity. 

Consider:

  • How does the book reflect students’ identities, cultures, and interests? 
  • Does it challenge stereotypes and move beyond single stories?
  • Is the text authentic and accurate? 
  • Could the text cause harm? If so, for whom? 

Secondly, it’s important to consider instructional entry points for read-alouds. Choose texts with rich language, complex themes, and opportunities for critical thinking and discussion. Explore standard alignment and students’ academic and social-emotional needs.

Consider:

  • What do I want students to think about, question, or take away?
  • How will this text connect with standards and help build background knowledge and vocabulary?  
  • What potential challenges may impede students’ understanding? 
  • Where can I pause to model comprehension strategies (e.g. connections, summary, inferences, asking questions, etc.)? 
  • What other texts can be layered to deepen understanding? 

Plan ahead for unfamiliar vocabulary, abstract concepts, or cultural references. Identify moments in the text to pause and clarify ideas, build background knowledge, and invite discussion. These instructional entry points create opportunities to deepen students’ comprehension, engage in discussion, and nurture classroom community. 

Book List Resources: 


Read-Aloud Using the Multiple Read Framework 

To support deeper, critical comprehension during read-alouds, engage students in multiple readings of the same text. The first read introduces the text, the second builds shared understanding, and the return read promotes critical comprehension (Kelly et al., 2023).

First Read – The “Movie Read”
Read the book in its entirety without interruption, allowing students to enjoy the story and react emotionally. Ask open-ended questions like “What did you notice?” or “What surprised you?” to build familiarity and set the foundation for deeper engagement.

Second Read – Deepen Comprehension
Revisit the text to explore vocabulary, concepts, character motivations, plot development, and key ideas to build comprehension. Model proficient reader strategies through think alouds (e.g. connect, infer, ask questions, etc.). 

Return Read – Read Critically
Analyze the text to examine perspective, power, and bias. Encourage students to question the text, challenge stereotypes, and consider alternate viewpoints. 

Sample critical questions include:

  • Whose voice is heard? Whose is missing?
  • What assumptions does this story make?
  • How might a different character tell this story?
  • Who benefits from the message of this text—and who might be harmed?

Tip: If pressed for time to reread the entire book for the second and return reads, revisit intentionally selected excerpts of the text based on instructional goals.

Sample Multiple Read Framework: Dragons Love Tacos by Rubin

This story helps readers understand how paying attention to details matters—even small ones like what kind of salsa is served. It also shows how trying to do something kind (like throwing a party) can have unexpected results when you’re not careful.

Next compare with the dragon in the The Paper Bag Princess by Munsch, then explore lessons comparing the main character, Elizabeth with female characters in traditional fairy tales. The following text set demonstrates how to build on ideas and perspectives introduced in each subsequent book. 

Text Set Connections & Extensions:

For more sample lessons using the multiple read framework, see Critical Comprehension: Lessons for Guiding Students to Deeper Meaning. 

Read-Aloud as Transformation 

In today’s classrooms—especially amid rising book bans and cultural erasure—it is essential to use read-alouds to center students’ voices, celebrate diverse stories, and encourage critical comprehension. Through intentional planning and repeated engagement with thoughtfully selected read-alouds, students develop not only as better readers but more empathetic, informed, and justice-oriented citizens. 

Reflect: 

  • How will you bring more purpose to your read-alouds? 

For more, check out Katie’s co-authored books including her newest book From Empathy to Action: Empowering K–6 Students to Create Change Through Reading, Writing, and Research. She can be contacted at ktkelly24@gmail.com. 

References

Bishop, R. S. (1990). Mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom, 6(3), ix–xi.

Compton-Lilly, C., Spence, L. K., Thomas, P. L., & Decker, S. L. (2023). Stories grounded in decades of research: What we truly know about the teaching of reading. The Reading Teacher, 77(3), 392–400.

Duke, N., Ward, A.E., Pearson, P.D. (2021). The Science of Reading Comprehension Instruction. The Reading Teacher, 74(6), 663-672.

Duke, N. K., & Cartwright, K. B. (2021). The science of reading progresses: Communicating advances beyond the simple view of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(1), 25–44.

Hass, C., Kelly, K., & Laminack, L. (2026). From Empathy to Action: Empowering K–6 Students to Create Change Through Reading, Writing, and Research. Routledge.

Kelly, K., Laminack, L., & Vasquez, V. (2023). Critical Comprehension: Lessons for Guiding Students to Deeper Meaning. Corwin.

Laminack, L. & Kelly, K. (2019). Reading to Make a Difference: Using Literature to Help Children Think Deeply, Speak Freely, and Take Action. Heinemann. 



The Weight We Carry, the Hope We Hold: Building Resilience and Renewal

By Ashlee Saddler, EdD, MEd, MSW 2026 CCIRA Conference Featured Speaker

If you take a look around our broader educational landscape, you will see what may appear to be significant amounts of heaviness as educators across the sector are navigating new and profound challenges. These are internal and external challenges that are being faced and impacting how we move through our space, and how we engage in our practice and with each other. 

For context, education is my second career. I began as a mental health therapist working with children and families in Denver, Colorado, where I witnessed firsthand the effects of limited educational opportunities, scarce resources, generational poverty, and untreated or undertreated mental health needs. As I transitioned from community and family mental health into education, I recognized the transformative power schools hold for children. Education offered a protective layer—one that often shielded students from the challenges they faced outside of school. This protection came in many forms: caring teachers, engaging activities, meaningful courses, beloved books, and supportive peers. I saw students who struggled at home find stability, confidence, and joy within the walls of their schools.

As a principal, I merged my background in mental health with my work in special education, focusing on improving not only academic outcomes for all students but also the overall wellness of our school community. During my principalship, I recognized the importance of extending the same commitment to wellness to educators and staff—marking the beginning of a more intentional and focused wellness journey.

To put my commitment into practice, I carved out time in our school schedule for wellness days for the entire PK-8th grade building complete with guided yoga activities, building sensory jars, engaging in creative writing, exercise through dance, creating aromatherapy balls, and more. This time was essential as it created a healthy outlet for students, allowed the students and teachers to pause and breathe, and gave permission to teachers to build in time to refill their wellness buckets. As we know, no one can pour from an empty cup. 

Over the past few years, we have weathered incredible storms and I would be remiss to believe that we will not face more in the near or distant future. So, how do we continue to build our resiliency to weather storms while also embracing the potential for what’s to come? We should not operate in a space where we are surviving traumatic event after traumatic event. We also should not be in a space where we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, knowing something amiss is on the horizon. These are nice sentiments, but we also need to operate within reality. So how do we continue to fuel the fire for the commitment, passion, and love that we have for our complex and evolving profession? In the midst of complexity and change, how do we create a space where there is stability and balance? 

One way to combat the weight of our important, life changing work and infuse hope into our daily practice, is through the act of gratitude. Before you emit a large huff and an internal eye roll, consider the impressive research around gratitude. 

  • There is a litany of research around the positive impact of gratitude. Expressing gratitude has physical, mental, and psychological benefits, including improved immune responses (Graham, 2022; Madeson, 2025;  Mosunic, 2025; Shaffer, 2020). 
  • Expressing gratitude helps to build individual resiliency (Graham, 2022). 
  • Expressing gratitude leads to appreciation of what exists and what is present, and it opens one’s eyes to possibilities. 
  • Graham (2022) indicates that research supports a direct correlation between gratitude and increased cognitive ability, goal attainment, and the ability to manage an increased cognitive load. 
  • Expressing gratitude rewires the brain (Madeson, 2025) and allows individuals to focus on the positive as opposed to constantly ruminating on the negative. 
  • Increased cortisol is directly connected to being subjected to persistent stressors. High levels of cortisol have been linked to disease. Expressing gratitude helps to reduce stress hormones such as cortisol (Mosunic, 2025), and helps redirect feelings of helplessness and despair (Madeson, 2025). 

How might we express gratitude? 

  • While journaling is one way, it is certainly not the only way. However, if you do decide to keep a gratitude journal, be very specific about what you’re grateful for in your writing. The clarity and specificity prevents an internal type of toxic positivity. 
  • Surround yourself with grateful allies. In other words, how can you increase interactions with individuals who will contribute to your human capital and help you see the asset around you, instead of the deficits? 
  • Keep a few thank-you cards on hand. During my travels with the University of Virginia’s Partnership for Leaders in Education, I started carrying them with me. Over time, I realized how powerful it can be to pause and write a simple note to someone who made an impact during a visit—a teacher who inspired me during a classroom visit, a leader who led with courage, or a team that showed extraordinary care. Most recently, I provided a note to the nutrition services manager at a school who went the extra mile every time we visited. I wanted her to know that her efforts had not gone unnoticed. Those small, handwritten moments of gratitude often carry more weight than we imagine. They remind others that their efforts are seen and valued, and they remind me to stay grounded in appreciation. Gratitude, after all, nourishes both the giver and the receiver.

In a world that often feels heavy, gratitude lightens the load. It reminds us that even in the midst of challenges, there is goodness worth noticing and people worth celebrating. The weight we carry becomes more bearable when balanced by the hope we hold—and gratitude is the bridge between the two.

References

Graham, L. (2022). Gratitude: We are participant and witness all at once. Linda Graham.

Madeson, M.(2025). The neuroscience of gratitude and its effects on the brain. Positive 

Psychology. https://positivepsychology.com/neuroscience-of-gratitude/

Mosunic, C.M. (2025). The science of gratitude and how it can affect the brain. Calm. 

Shaffer, D.K. (2020). Golden gratitude. The research and reach of appreciation. Alive. 

Dr. Ashlee Saddler is a transformational coach, educator, and purpose-driven leader with more than 18 years of experience across K–12 education, higher education, and nonprofit sectors. She currently serves as District Support Chief for the University of Virginia’s Partnership for Leaders in Education (UVA‑PLE) and as Senior Director of Leadership at the Public Education and Business Coalition (PEBC). In these roles, she partners with school and district leaders across the country to strengthen instructional practice, grow leadership capacity, and drive sustainable, system-level change. Ashlee’s journey began as a mental health therapist, a foundation that continues to shape her whole-person approach to leadership and coaching. She has served as a principal, assistant principal, and Director of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education, leading equity-centered initiatives that resulted in significant academic gains for multilingual learners and historically underserved students. Through Saddler Consulting, LLC, Ashlee provides executive coaching, leadership development, and keynote speaking across education, corporate, and nonprofit spaces. She holds master’s degrees in both social work and education, and a doctorate from Baylor University, where her research focused on professional learning for school leaders. Ashlee’s work is grounded in helping others unlock potential, lead with intention, and create lasting change.