Home - Leah Cleary: Secondary Teacher Professional Development

Your students need you.

Teaching middle and high school students is complex, demanding work. Secondary teacher professional development often misses what actually matters: how we can keep the job sustainable while balancing content standards, literacy development, AI in education, and the daily reality of of everything our students are going through.

If you feel overwhelmed, it’s not because you’re doing something wrong. The expectations placed on today’s teachers are often unrealistic, and most professional learning resources don’t address that. You don’t need another productivity hack. You need permission, perspective, and a few tools that actually work.

That’s where I can help.

Start With "The Sustainable Teacher Sequence" Short Email Course (It's Free)

This free short email course is built for secondary teachers who are doing everything right and still feel like it’s not enough. Over four short lessons, you’ll get the framework I use after 25+ years in the classroom to triage an impossible workload, the language to set boundaries without guilt, and the reminder every teacher needs: adequate is not failure.

Inside the course:

Why burnout in secondary classrooms is systemic, not personal
A simple sort to identify what’s actually worth your energy
Scripts for the conversations every teacher dreads
One mindset shift that makes “good enough” sustainable

Sign up below to start the free course and get all four printable companion resources

Secondary Teacher Professional Development

If you’re looking for practical professional development designed specifically for middle and high school classrooms, my online courses for teachers provide ready-to-use strategies you can implement immediately. These self-paced trainings focus on AI integration in education, strengthening literacy in secondary content areas, and instructional practices that increase student engagement without adding to your workload. Each course is built by a classroom teacher, for classroom teachers, so you gain tools that work in real-world settings.

Literacy Strategies for Secondary Teachers

Looking to boost student literacy across all subjects? This summer series introduces 6 proven strategies that form the foundation of student success. From purposeful close reading to confident essay writing, each week unpacks an essential skill that builds upon the last. Whether you’re a veteran teacher or new to the classroom, these practical strategies help students become engaged, independent learners ready for our rapidly changing world.

The series includes templates and resources through the Free Resource Library to help you implement these techniques seamlessly in your classroom. Click the links to explore each strategy and transform your literacy instruction this all year.

Teaching Resources You'll Love

Hi, I’m Leah Cleary.

I’ve been a public school teacher for over 20 years. I’ve taught middle and high school–almost every subject in social studies and ELA. It’s been a journey.

It’s no doubt a tough job–that’s why so many teachers get burned out. I don’t want that to happen to you for one simple reason. Your students need YOU.

That’s why I want to help make your journey a little bit easier with secondary classroom-tested tips, strategies, and resources. And I want to give you time to remember that no one else can offer your students what you can.

Latest from the blog & Podcast

Colorful cut paper shapes including a pink circle, purple octagon, and green rectangle connected by yellow arrows on a teal background, representing graphic organizers for high school students and the digital graphic organizers vs paper debate for note catching strategies in the classroom.

Graphic Organizers for High School Students: Should I Use Tech for This?

You’ve heard of note-taking. Note-catching is something a little different. And that distinction is at the heart of this post. We’re looking at graphic organizers for high school students, and as part of the Should I Use Tech for This? summer series, we’re asking whether digital graphic organizers or paper serve high school students better, and the answer circles back to the same research that guided our note-taking post way back at the start of the series. We’re also covering the folded paper technique, standard annotation graphic organizers, and the one digital tool, NotebookLM, that does something for note-catching strategies that paper simply cannot replicate.

Weaponizing Screen Time: The EdTech Debate with Short Answer Founder Adam Sparks

The edtech debate is loud right now — phone bans, screen time limits, districts pausing technology renewals to send the “right message” to parents. But what happens when the research being used to justify those decisions doesn’t actually apply to classroom technology? In this season finale of If Teachers Ruled the World, I sit down with Adam Sparks, founder of Short Answer and a former classroom teacher, to talk about what’s really driving the anti-edtech movement, what he’s seeing on the ground, and why he’s not stopping.

Teacher Voices on Technology: Not One Said Get Rid of It

The loudest voices in the edtech debate right now are politicians, researchers, and administrators. But where are the teacher voices on technology? In this episode, I step back and hand the mic to nine educators across subjects and grade levels — a special education teacher, an ESOL teacher, a media specialist, science teachers, history teachers, and more. Not one of them said get rid of the technology. Not one. Here’s what they said instead.

A high school student giving a technology-enhanced presentation to classmates, illustrating creative student presentation ideas for high school and transformative technology use in the classroom.

Student Presentation Ideas for High School: When Technology Genuinely Transforms the Work

The best student presentations I’ve seen in my classroom came from a Theory of Knowledge class that turned their exhibitions into Saturday Night Live-style comedy sketches. They couldn’t have done it without technology. And they couldn’t have done it with AI alone either. In this post, part of the Should I Use Tech for This? summer series, I’m sharing what transformative student presentation ideas for high school look like, why creative student presentations go so far beyond the standard slideshow, and the one condition that makes technology work for this task rather than against it.

Image of AI in the Classroom post--stop policing and rerhink.

Stop Playing AI Police: How to Reimagine AI in the Classroom

A student once accused me of writing with AI. The evidence? My em dash. I’ve been using em dashes for thirty years — blame Shakespeare, not a chatbot. But it made me stop and think: if my own writing gets flagged, what does that mean for the whole project of trying to catch AI in the classroom? In this episode, I make the case for why AI detection is a losing game, and what reimagining instruction around process over product actually looks like instead.

Image of a magnifying glass over a dictionary for the post "Should I Use Tech for Vocabulary Practice Strategies?"

Should I Use Tech for Vocabulary Practice Strategies? What I Learned the Hard Way

I once built an elaborate digital vocabulary practice system, complete with drag-and-drop checkboxes and instructional videos, and I was so proud of it that I started selling it. It was a complete waste of everyone’s time. In this post, part of the Should I Use Tech for This? summer series, I’m sharing what that failure taught me about vocabulary practice strategies, why digital vocabulary tools for teachers shine at the surface level and fall flat at the deep and transfer levels, and how Quizlet, Quiz-Quiz-Trade, and a stack of laminated task cards all earned a permanent place in my vocabulary instruction for high school students.