Bio
Ariel Sacks is a middle school English Language Arts teacher, literacy coach, and education author in New York City. She has a B.A. in English from Brown University. She studied progressive pedagogy at Bank Street College, where Madeleine Ray, her mentor first introduced her to the whole novels method. This year she completed her Masters in Public School Leadership at Teachers College. There, she worked with a team to design a new school which won the 2025 New School Design Competition.
She is proud to say this is her twentieth year of classroom teaching. Throughout her career, she has worked with a wide range of diverse learners both in NYCPS schools and currently in a unionized (UFT) public charter school. She is the Co-Coordinator of Teaching and Learning for the middle school teaching staff and she leads the middle school-wide reading program, which includes an independent reading program and targeted interventions to reach all readers. She enjoys leading teams of teachers.
She has led many team meetings, planned field trips, mentored new teachers, coordinated middle school student council, and written advisory curriculum. She has placed many orders for exciting, diverse books for middle school students and has recommended those books to students and families. She is not the funniest teacher her students will meet (by a long shot), but she knows when to laugh, and manages to land a few good jokes throughout the school year. She honors her students’ backgrounds, the experiences they bring to their learning, and creates opportunities for students to channel their unique intelligence into their work as readers, writers, and members of a classroom community. She enjoys trying out new ideas in response to students’ strengths, needs, and interests.
Ariel published two book: Whole Novels For the Whole Class: A Student Centered Approach (Jossey Bass 2014) and Who Gets To Write Fiction: Opening Doors To Imaginative Writing for All Students (W.W. Norton 2023). She has written about teaching and education policy for years at Center for Teaching Quality (now Mira Education), in her Education Week column, and in ACSD Education Leadership, as well as other publications.
An advocate for teacher leadership, Ariel was a member of the team that co-authored Teaching 2030: What We Must Do For Our Public Schools--Now and in the Future (Teachers College Press, 2010) and is a featured educator in the book Teacherpreneurs: Innovative Teachers Who Lead Without Leaving (Jossey Bass 2014). Through her writing, she's been able to connect with teachers around the world and support the development of student-centered practices in English Language Arts. She has been a speaker at education conferences, such as Qu'dwa Global Teachers Forum, The Big Ideas Fest, Bank Street College Language Series, and Pearson's Conference On Teaching. She is a 2022 Finalist for the NYC FLAG Award For Excellence in Teaching.
Ariel enjoys taking her daughter to the park and playing violin in musical projects with her husband. Her life-long love of stories, poetry, and writing is in no small part due to the influence of her late Baba (grandmother), Lillian Faber Sacks, a fierce educator, who taught every grade, earned a doctorate at NYU in her late 70's, and knew how to bring out the voices of children.
Email: wholenovels@gmail.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ArielSacksAuthor
Linked In: linkedin.com/in/arielsacks
Instagram: @ariel_sacks
