With Honors

This week we feature a teacher's walkthrough of our assigned summer reading: Paolo Coelho’s The Alchemist. Our friend Drew Haston discusses his important takeaways of the book and several things he would consider pairing with it.

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.

In this episode, my co-teacher Hannah and I spent the day at McKay’s Used Books in Nashville.

Part of our fun-day at the bookstore was an English teacher side quest: Find 5 books you wish you could teach if there were no constraints, no arguments, no intervening curriculum management. The only rule was that the book had to physically be on the McKay’s bookshelf. Everything else was fair game. What are we looking for when we are creating a curriculum for our class? What are we shopping for when looking for a new text to teach with our standards? And if you limit it to only the dream five you can find today, what do you save and what do you cut? On the ride home, we podcast about our choices.

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.

We continue our conversations about The Big Summer Read—The Lord of the Rings—by taking a trip to Tennessee Tech University and spending the morning with Dr. Shirley Laird. She’s a beloved, long-time veteran professor of English, specializing in courses for sophomores, teaching Shakespeare, Chaucer, Tolkien, Anglo-Saxon studies, and grammar. Dr. Laird is fondly remembered for her delicate and erudite wisdom, her summer Shakespeare seminars, and her enjoyment of Major League Baseball. We came to ask her perspective: What’s it like for you to teach Tolkien’s work at the university level? How do you respond to critics that say Tolkien is not literary? What values do our heroes in Tolkien and Beowulf embody for us? And of course, are you still rooting against the Yankees this season?

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.

This week, my co-teacher Drew Haston and I discuss The Odyssey and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a film whose setting and music and characters resonate with those of us in the South—a people forever clinging to the notion of home, hospitality, and old timey truths.

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 week, we joined forces with Drew at A Deadman’s Books to present the first check-in episode of the Big Summer Read: Fellowship of the Ring.

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.

The Odyssey is a story of many things, and for me, it’s ultimately an adventure story of fathers and sons, the story of a man spending years of anguish trying to undo his mistakes and just get back home to the ones who love him. For Father’s Day weekend, I sit with my son and we discuss both The Odyssey and his summer reading assignment, How to Read Literature like a Professor.

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.

https://open.spotify.com/show/1XH9lSrS2YlZEhb3xpy5JW?si=0c8cce76d3e743b0

https://open.spotify.com/show/0881bUWWdgkBdGzHlPNToi?si=b510a0cd363a4320

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/with-honors/id1797115480

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCweufFHJbylu4tR598SDj5w

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.

https://open.spotify.com/show/4HtulwbO10pOjV5hbdWOty?si=a23d92c90128476e

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-deadmans-books/id1795582942

This episode features the music “Groove Delight” by Musinova and ideas from Thomas C. Foster's How to Read Literature like a Professor.

Over the summer, my Honors and AP English students are asked to read a text in common. In this week's episode, Drew Haston and I are exploring Thomas C. Foster's helpful guide, How to Read Literature Like a Professor.

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.

https://open.spotify.com/show/1XH9lSrS2YlZEhb3xpy5JW?si=0c8cce76d3e743b0

https://open.spotify.com/show/0881bUWWdgkBdGzHlPNToi?si=b510a0cd363a4320

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/with-honors/id1797115480

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCweufFHJbylu4tR598SDj5w

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.

https://open.spotify.com/show/4HtulwbO10pOjV5hbdWOty?si=a23d92c90128476e

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-deadmans-books/id1795582942

This episode features the music “Groove Delight” by Musinova and plentiful discussion of Thomas C. Foster’s book, How to Read Literature like a Professor.

Summer break is finally here! In this first epiosde of our Summer Series for the podcast, we’re meeting up with a friend at the coffee shop and getting to discuss a book she considered for her Honors class: The Names by Florence Knapp.

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 a deep dive into The Names by Florence Knapp.

It’s the season finale! On the last day of school, I recorded with Chloe (and eventually Trever, Owen, and Athena) about generative AI, Lord of the Rings, moral relativism, and C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man. What a way to end the year!

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 Wicked AI's "Disco Lord of the Rings: One Funk to Rule Them All", available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

It’s the end of the school year. The seniors have graduated, classrooms are packed up, and we’re coming to the end of Season 2. Maylee joins me again as we reflect on what we did this semester and Hamlet.

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.