With Honors

One of my dearest students comes back to the table to discuss social commentary, the right to life, and question each other's views.

With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongside our other podcast, Second Stage, on major platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Also, throw some love at our brother podcast with Drew Haston, A Deadman’s Books. You can find him on Spotify and Apple Podcasts as well.

This episode features “Groove Delight” by Musinova and “Sipping on Jazz” by Bleck trend Music, used under their respective Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licenses.

In this third episode from Courtney Reads It All, our book reviewer discuss her next 5-star read: Barbara Truelove’s She’s a Doll. The book seems half-inspired by Grady Hendrix, half-inspired by “Goodbye Earl.” A woman dies before her time and her spirit comes to inhabit a doll. Together with her lifelong friend, they seek to mete out some posthumous justice to the cruel man who has damaged their lives.

Courtney Reads It All is presented by Free Zone Radio. You can find it every Friday this season. Be sure to check out our other shows With Honors and Second Stage, as well as our brother podcast A Deadman’s Books. You can find them here, on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and YouTube.

This episode also features “Ambient Bit Two” by Tolset Music and “Dark Skies” by DJ Spooky, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

This season, I’m going to incorporate some walkthroughs of actual lessons I teach during the year, and to lead off that series, I’m beginning with the basics: teaching plot. We explore the fundamentals of the plot diagram, exposition, climax, resolution and denouement, as well as the finer points of suspense and conflict. More importantly, this is a walkthrough in WHY we are still teaching plot at the start of sophomore year. As Kurt Vonnegut teaches us, there’s an array of geometries to our stories, and that’s because humans are complicated creatures telling complicated stories to somehow get perspective on a complicated world.

With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongside our other podcast, Second Stage, on major platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Also, throw some love at our brother podcast with Drew Haston, A Deadman’s Books. You can find him on Spotify and Apple Podcasts as well.

This episode features “Groove Delight” by Musinova and “Free Jazzy” by Pulsebox used under their respective Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licenses. All rights remain with the original artists and copyright holders. It also features a clip of Kurt Vonnegut’s lecture on the geometry of plots, uploaded to YouTube by David Comberg, October 30, 2010.

In this second installment of Courtney Reads It All, our book reviewer discuss her great love for Paul Tremblay — and her unfortunate disappointment in his newest novel, Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep. But while she might DNF the book (and possibly skip ahead to read the ending by itself), she wonders if she’ll discover that the ending merits going back and reading the rest of the story.

Courtney Reads It All is presented by Free Zone Radio. You can find it every Friday this season. Be sure to check out our other shows With Honors and Second Stage, as well as our brother podcast A Deadman’s Books. You can find them here, on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and YouTube.

This episode also features “Ambient Bit Two” by Tolset Music and “Dark Skies” by DJ Spooky, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

As a teacher, it’s inevitable. There are certain students who become fixtures of your classroom. Alizabeth and Lily have always been two of the most memorable, funniest, talented people from my classes. They made videos that captured the soul of that class. They ended their sophomore year and senior year by gifting me a compilation video of our memories together. And during their senior year, they made a Valentine’s TikTok that somehow reached more than 29 million views and six million likes. Now they’ve graduated and moved on to college. But today, they came back for a little while, remembering that classroom, unpacking the quote book, and reflecting on who the people we were then and the lives they started living next.

With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongside our other podcast, Second Stage, on major platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Also, throw some love at our brother podcast with Drew Haston, A Deadman’s Books. You can find him on Spotify and Apple Podcasts as well.

This episode also features “Groove Delight” by Musinova and “Sipping on Jazz” by BlackTrendMusic, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

Each week, our friend Courtney Ferris reviews a book. This week she takes us through Sally Hepworth’s 2025 novel Mad Mabel, a darkly funny mystery about two kinds of people no one ever expects to be murderers: little girls and old ladies.

You can find more of her reviews on Courtney Reads It All, on both Instagram and TikTok.

This episode also features “Ambient Bit Two” by Tolset Music and a piano arrangement by Lowtone Music, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

We’re kicking off Season 3 with this two-part episode, and the conversation that launched with sophomore English now lands with AP Lit. Why read these works over the summer? Why read them at all? How are texts like The Kite Runner or The Importance of Being Earnest a foundation or a framework for what we do this school year? Moreso, how are they a framework for the lives we lead outside the classroom? What do they teach us about who we are and who we’re becoming? My students and my administrator Amy Hawkins join the conversation.

With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongside our other podcast, Second Stage, on major platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Also, throw some love at our brother podcast with Drew Haston, A Deadman’s Books. You can find him on Spotify and Apple Podcasts as well.

This episode also features “Groove Delight” by Musinova and “Sipping on Jazz” by BlackTrendMusic, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

Why do a summer reading assignment? And why read these two pieces? Why—what do they have to do with a school year of sophomore literature?

With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongside our other podcast, Second Stage, on major platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Also, throw some love at our brother podcast with Drew Haston, A Deadman’s Books. You can find him on Spotify and Apple Podcasts as well.

This episode also features “Groove Delight” by Musinova and “Sipping on Jazz” by Black Trend Music, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

What’s the best way for readers to approach The Odyssey now in 2026? Audiences can watch the film, but are they missing a richness informed by the actual epic? And if that’s true, which translation, or which publication of it? And do those still play well with readers today? Is the graphic novel appropriate for high school readers? What about Nolan’s movie? Are these useful, suitable, dare I say literary tools for the high school classroom?

With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongside our other podcast, Second Stage, on major platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Also, throw some love at our brother podcast with Drew Haston, A Deadman’s Books. You can find him on Spotify and Apple Podcasts as well.

This episode also features “Groove Delight” by Musinova, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

Each year I assign a summer reading assignment for my Honors sophomore English class and for my AP Lit course. In this episode, I do a walkthrough of my summer reading assignment. If you’re a student, this can be a helpful talkthrough of my vision for the assignment, my expectations, why I think it’s important. And if you’re a teacher, maybe this can be helpful for you in considering your own approach to a summer reading assignment.

With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show alongside our other podcast, Second Stage, on major platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Also, throw some love at our brother podcast with Drew Haston, A Deadman’s Books. You can find him on Spotify and Apple Podcasts as well.

This episode also features “Groove Delight” by Musinova and “Got to Get Funky” by Juqbox Music, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.