Bio
Ariel Sacks is a middle school English Language Arts teacher and literacy coach in New York City. She is proud to say this is her nineteenth year of classroom teaching. Throughout her career, she has worked with a wide range of diverse learners both in DOE schools and currently in a unionized (UFT) public charter school. She has led many team meetings, planned field trips, mentored new teachers, coordinated middle school student council, and planned advisory lessons. She has selected and placed many orders for exciting, diverse books for middle school students and has recommended those books to students and families. She is not the funniest teacher her students will meet (by a long shot), but she knows when to laugh, and manages to land a few good jokes throughout the school year. She honors her students’ backgrounds, the experiences they bring to their learning, and creates opportunities for students to channel their unique intelligence into their work as readers, writers, and members of a classroom community. She enjoys trying out new ideas in response to students’ strengths, needs, and interests.
Ariel has a B.A. in English from Brown University. She studied progressive pedagogy at Bank Street College of Education, where her mentor and longtime collaborator, Madeleine Ray, first introduced her to the whole novel approach and encouraged her to integrate imaginative writing into literature studies.
Ariel published Whole Novels For the Whole Class: A Student Centered Approach in 2013 (Jossey Bass) and ten years later, she's just released Who Gets To Write Fiction: Opening Doors To Imaginative Writing for All Students (W.W. Norton). She has written about teaching and education policy for years at Center for Teaching Quality (now Mira Education), in her Education Week column, and in ACSD Education Leadership, as well as other publications.
An advocate for teacher leadership, Ariel was a member of the team that co-authored Teaching 2030: What We Must Do For Our Public Schools--Now and in the Future (Teachers College Press, 2010) and is a featured educator in the book Teacherpreneurs: Innovative Teachers Who Lead Without Leaving (Jossey Bass 2014). Through her writing, she's been able to connect with teachers around the world and support the development of student-centered practices in English Language Arts. She has been a speaker at education conferences, such as Qu'dwa Global Teachers Forum, The Big Ideas Fest, Bank Street College Language Series, and Pearson's Conference On Teaching. She is a 2022 Finalist for the NYC FLAG Award For Excellence in Teaching.
Ariel enjoys taking her daughter to the park and playing violin in musical projects with her husband. She is a former member of the Tree Climbing Club and co-wrote the never produced musical theater masterpiece, A Horse Named Bart. Her life-long love of stories, poetry, and writing is in no small part due to the influence of her late Baba (grandmother), Lillian Faber Sacks, a fierce educator, who taught every grade, earned a doctorate at NYU in her late 70's, and knew how to bring out the voices of children.
Email: wholenovels@gmail.com
Twitter/X: @arielsacks
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ArielSacksAuthor
Linked In: linkedin.com/in/arielsacks
Instagram: @ariel_sacks
