Educator Resources
Free, research-backed resources for educators, including teaching guides for AJ’s books, video series on resilience/bullying and LGBTQ+ issues affecting students, as well as toolkits to help librarians advocate for author visits.
AJ created these because she’s a school counselor first and an author second. She knows what actually helps students versus what just looks like it does. Everything here is grounded in real training and built to be useful in real classrooms. Use them, share them, send them under your own name. No credit required and nothing expected in return.
Teaching Guides
author Visit funding
The Middle School Author Visit Funding Toolkit
Reading motivation collapses between fifth and seventh grade, and middle school librarians keep getting passed over for author visits while elementary gets them year after year. This research-backed toolkit gives you the citations, talking points, and ready-to-send email language to flip that conversation. Free to use, share, and adapt under your own name.
The High School Author Visit Funding Toolkit
In 1976, nearly 40% of U.S. 12th graders read six or more books for pleasure in a year. By 2021-22, it was 13%. High school is the last institutional touchpoint before students leave the K-12 system as readers or non-readers for life. This toolkit gives high school librarians the peer-reviewed citations, talking points, and admin email language to make that case in three minutes flat. Free to use under your own name.
The Middle School Author Visit Impact Measurement toolkit
You won the visit. Now prove it worked. Pre- and post-visit student surveys built around the four mechanisms peer-reviewed research links to middle school reading achievement, plus a no-stats-required analysis guide and a fill-in-the-blank report template you hand directly to admin. Closes the loop so funding the next visit is easier than the last one.
The high School Author Visit Impact Measurement toolkit
The high school companion to the funding toolkit. Pre- and post-visit student surveys measuring the four mechanisms research links to high school reading achievement — choice and autonomy, self-efficacy, reader identity, and intellectual engagement with text — with items written for students who’ll see through any survey that talks down to them. Generate local data that turns one visit into a case for the next.
videos
