Jess Lifshitz has been teaching fifth-grade English language arts in Northbrook, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, for seventeen years. In addition to her work in the classroom, Jess was part of the first cohort of Heinemann Fellows, and she has written for several literacy-related publications. She writes on her own blog regularly at crawlingoutoftheclassroom.wordpress.com. In everything that Jess does, she believes in helping students learn to use reading and writing to better understand and create positive change in the world beyond the classroom. You can follow her and the work she does with students on Twitter at @Jess5th.
