Talks With Teachers

Les Burns is an Associate Professor of Literacy at the University of Kentucky and a former high school English language arts teacher in rural and suburban Kansas. He is the Program Chair of English Education for the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. Les served as the chief curriculum consultant for the state of Kentucky’s P-12 Model Curriculum Framework for all content areas and grade levels, which was awarded the John I. Wilson National Award for Innovation in Education in 2010. He is a winner of the Edward B. Fry Book Award for Empowering Struggling Readers in 2011 for the advancement of knowledge, research, and intellectual risk-taking in the field of literacy, and served as the Higher Education Representative for English language arts in Kentucky’s Teacher Leader Network, which developed the standards and learning targets for teaching P-12 language arts in classrooms throughout Kentucky. "What can we do as teachers to be responsive to who our students are, what they want, and what they will do in