Hi, I'm Heather Dickens — and yes, the name is intentional.
Welcome to The Dickens Approach.
Charles Dickens wrote during the Industrial Revolution and didn’t hold back about the state of public education in his day. Here I am in 2026, back in a public high school by choice and at the precise moment AI is helping us reimagine public education as Dickens and I dreamed. The name fit.
I’m a teacher. I came back to the classroom in January 2026 after 22 years away, and I’m documenting the adventure of a revolution in education — starting now, while it’s still messy.
I'm not the AI expert in the room — but I'm learning. I'm a seasoned teacher with a B.S. in Education and an MBA in Ethical Leadership. I'm also a mother of three grown kids, bonus mom to one, with many years out in the "real world" beyond public ed. Since school let out this year, I keep circling one question: how do I serve my students as AI waves through every facet of our lives?
Here’s what you’ll find in your inbox:
Honest field notes from my classroom, flops included.
Conversations with the disrupters — teachers, parents, and students doing it differently.
The ethics underneath it all — who we want to be while everything changes.
Who we can be for our students — and real stories of how.
If any of that is your kind of thing, subscribe and walk with me. Let’s learn together.
My next post is the longer story — why I left teaching, where I went, and why I came back now. It begins with a line from Gandalf. I’ll see you there.
Stay awake. Stay curious. Stay ethical. Stay human.
— Heather