With Honors

<p>This week I talk to Whittney, a kid who knows just as much about pain and loss as anyone. She chose to explore how some of our popular literature examines that question too. Not “What’s the meaning of life” (which is...

<p>Is The Great Gatsby still relevant to America in 2026? Is America in 2026 still a place where the wealthy billionaires cavort like Greek gods, and the poor trudge away in the valley of ashes between them? Jackson and...

<p>There’s two starter types of Honors kids: the typically academically gifted kid, and the underdog hard worker who works their tail off for you. We’re five weeks out from graduation night. And this week, I’m sitting...

<p>This week, the seniors have come back to the table and wanted to talk about what they could have done differently in their four years.</p><p>With Honors is a Free Zone Radio production. You can find this show...

<p>This week comes with a bonus episode, one of several that are airing through graduation season, all about the typical high school senior’s experience in 2026. Have things changed so much since the 1980s? Were...

<p>Among the secular celebrations, March is also National Reading Month. And this week, some of my students wanted to discuss the emotional impact they get through reading. Maybe you won’t feel it the same way, but...

<p>It’s here at last. On Friday, March 20, 2026, Project Hail Mary arrived in theaters, and for our class, this wasn’t just any old trip to the movies. This was an epic launch.</p><p>With Honors is a Free Zone Radio...

<p>It’s so rare to find poetry in the wild outside the classroom, but this week, we sat down with a legendary poet of our own. Dr. Erin Hoover teaches at Tennessee Tech University here in Cookeville, TN. She’s a single...

<p>Last fall, Jackson wanted to pod about song lyrics, the way we study them in class with the TPCASTT framework. Today, he and Christopher are back to spend an afternoon of sophomore laughter and honors-kid thinking on...

<p>Basketball season is coming to an end again. Last year, three of our Honors girls involved in basketball sat down to recap the season. This year, two of our guys — Lucas and Henry — spin it again, not only to recap...

<p>We’re wrangling again with social commentary and with that familiar leap between what happens inside this classroom and what’s happening beyond it. Students were asked to debate the pros and cons of the US forcing an...

<p>It used to be fictional names like Katniss Everdeen, or Winston Smith, or Guy Montag. Now it’s Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti. It used to be dystopian fiction, but now it feels every day like dystopian reality...

<p>We’re back from Christmas break, back from a stack of snow days, and ready to start broadcasting the rest of season 2. And these episodes are produced by us, for us — genuine human content, but sometimes assisted by...

<p>The end of the year is a time for reflection. And this year, the novel Project Hail Mary has been a HUGE feature of our honors classroom. It spawned so many conversations and questions. While some kids were...

<p>This fall, Project Hail Mary became more than a class novel. It became the backbone for all our learning, through research projects, class discussions, projects, and novel study. By reading Andy Weir’s story early...