Some teachers are turning their students into published authors. Self-publishing projects in high school classrooms are being more prevalent. 

"It gave them real-world skills," said Tonya McQuade, an English teacher at Los Gatos High School in California, according to an article on USNews.com. The article said that McQuade’s students published an electronic poetry anthology they created in class last year.​ "It made them more excited about poetry than they might have normally been."

According to the article, “National Poetry Month is in April and publishing a class poetry anthology, like McQuade’s classes’ did, might be a timely project for high school English teachers. But educators can ​also assist their students in self-publishing individual short stories, science-themed nonfiction books and other written works​ during class.”

“Self-publishing platforms, such as Amazon’s CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing, allow virtually anyone to publish a book for free or minimal costs,” the article said. “Usually authors upload a file of their complete book and the program handles the rest.”

​Rob Durham, an English teacher at Marquette High School in Missouri had “upperclassmen creative writing​ students self-publish their own short stories this year during a semester​long course,” the article said.

"Instead of doing punctuation worksheets, they are actually editing real punctuation and everything," Durham said. "They also learned to give and receive constructive criticism. 

McQuade, said her three English classes “worked in teams on event planning, marketing and layout and design, among other tasks​. Two other English classes contributed poems to the anthology as well, but did not participate in the production process.​”

"I am not a high-tech person​ and so this was definitely something outside of my comfort zone initially to learn all of these things," said McQuade. I hadn't even used iPads, but the kids knew exactly what to do."

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Article by Kassondra Granata, Education World Contributor