Toni Tessier

Toni has received numerous awards and honors in her teaching career including a Connecticut Excellence Award, an Amistad fellowship, and a Fund for Teachers grant.

Toni has taught students from grade nine honors students to seniors who plan to go straight to work. Due to her role as a reading specialist she has been able to spend a great deal of time working one-on-one or in small groups to help learners develop reading and writing skills.

Toni’s sweet spot is teaching thematically, a method where she surrounds an anchor text with articles, stories, poems, and other short works that share similar themes and can provide contrast or context. Thematic teaching allows students to experience different ways of treating a core concept or idea; and culminating assignments are designed to push them to explore comparisons and contrasts across several pieces of writing. Writing, including personal writing, literary analysis, argumentation, and research projects—including grammar and usage—are core to Toni’s approach and are usually integrated into her plans.

Some of Toni’s favorite thematic units focus on coming of age, self-identity, justice, the American dream, dystopias, and friendship. Within these units, texts such as Of Mice and Men, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Great Gatsby, Macbeth, The Things They Carried, The Round House, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings are perennial favorites.