A FREE BOOK BY DAVID CUTLER
Teachers First
Helping Students Think for Themselves
Drawn from years of teaching and reporting, these 46 essays explore writing, history, student journalism, assessment, and AI. They include lessons that worked, mistakes I made, and views I reconsidered.
My experience carries much of the argument. I welcome agreement and disagreement, with teachers leading the discussion and students at the center of our work.
The complete book is free. No account or email address required.
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- 200 pages, with clickable contents and links.
October 2026 edition · 46 essays · 8 chapters
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START WHERE YOU ARE CURIOUS
Inside the book
Read in order or choose a topic. Notes before selected essays flag changes in my thinking. Chapter 7 also retains a short 2023 excerpt within its reconsideration section. Questions at the end invite you to consider your own practice.
01What Will They Remember5 essays
02You Cannot Cover Everything5 essays
03Writing Is Thinking6 essays
- 3.1Why I Teach Journalism to My High School History Students
- 3.2To Teach Effective Writing, Model Effective Writing
- 3.3What I Learned about Teaching Writing from the Late, Great William Zinsser
- 3.4How to Curb Student Cheating
- 3.5Faking the College Application Essay
- 3.6AI Evangelists, Stop Calling Writing Teachers Luddites
04Teaching the Students in Front of Us8 essays
- 4.1How to Teach Introverted Students
- 4.2A Tale of Two Teachers
- 4.3When Lessons Are Harmful, Insensitive
- 4.4Responding to Trump’s Language in the Classroom
- 4.5Why Student Tracking Is Just Plain Wrong
- 4.6How to Help Increasingly Stressed-Out Students
- 4.7Why Parents Stink at Communicating
- 4.8What I Want My Students and My Son to Know
05Rethinking Grades, Tests, and Rewards5 essays
06Student Voice Requires Adult Courage4 essays
07Who Is Doing the Thinking7 essays
- 7.1Lessons from Nintendo: Game-Based Learning
- 7.2Technology: The Faustian Bargain
- 7.3Artificial Shortcuts, Real Consequences: The Costs of AI “Humanizers” to Learning
- 7.4Generative AI Has No Place in My Classroom
- 7.5Don’t Let AI Climb the Hill for Our Kids
- 7.6Teaching About AI Is Necessary. Teaching With AI Should Be Optional.
- 7.7The Pedagogy of Presence
08Teachers Must Keep Learning Too6 essays
- 8.1Rookie Teacher Confessions
- 8.2What Teachers Should Learn from Legendary Cross Country Coach Joe Newton
- 8.3Fixing Bad Professional Development
- 8.4Why Can’t Public and Private Schools Get Along?
- 8.5A New Twist on a Public-Private School Partnership
- 8.6What Gordon Wood, Eric Foner and James W. Loewen Told Me About Teaching History
PUBLISHERS & LITERARY AGENTS
The next book
My next book explores how teachers can help students see the value in what they learn and apply it beyond an assignment or test. I want to build on fresh classroom material to make a deeper argument about purpose and application: how students connect knowledge and skills to questions and problems that matter to them.
Publishing inquiries