About

I’m Andrew Plemmons Pratt, a member of the 2010 Teach for America corps in the D.C. Region. I teach 7th grade reading in Prince George’s County.

Before joining Teach For America, I worked at a DC think tank called the Center for American Progress, where I helped start up a magazine about science and technology policy called Science Progress (http://www.scienceprogress.org/). While working on that project, I saw how fundamental strong communications skills were to shaping government policy, and how the Internet could magnify disruptive ideas. As Managing Editor, I wrote posts and articles, built information graphics, commissioned journalists, and researchers to write on all manner of issues, and produced a series of podcast interviews with experts.

I became a teacher to help young people in the capitol region take hold of that same power with their literacy skills. In the first weeks of school this year, one of my students wrote about their iPads: “Every young adult or kid loves to work with technology so it is a good way to make them read.” And read they have: digital books and graphic novels have hooked even the most reluctant readers in my class.

Currently, my primary responsibility is accelerating literacy skills for about 100 7th graders. But to keep myself sane (and to do that job better), I’m trying to migrate to a digital classroom so my kids can read and write in contexts similar to those I worked in in my previous career. In August 2011, I convinced my principals to let me use a class set of the school-owned iPads to make this happen. Technology enables literacy, and that’s how I use it for my students. The iPads give my struggling readers access to digital versions of the Bone graphic novels by Jeff Smith, which have taken my boys class by storm. Students log their daily reading homework on a Google form that lives on our class website. And when students submit Brief Constructed Responses as part of their classwork through our Moodle Learning Management System, I can archive their work and create personalized digital feedback that lives in their online portfolio for the entire year.

To share progress and successes in my classroom, I created a project called Read Write Rock (http://www.readwriterock.org/). Basically, this is a mailing list where I update friends, family, and colleagues about what I’m doing so they can share the good news and donate things like books.

Before all that, my original work with web technologies included building digital humanities projects and designing websites for arts and advocacy organizations at the University of Virginia. I hold a master’s degree in English from U.Va. and a bachelor’s from U.Va. in English and American Studies.

Here’s my current resume:
AndrewPlemmonsPratt Resume-updated Nov 12, 2011