The Year of Zora.
For the 2026 - 2027 school year, The CIE Lab will only provide professional learning experiences centering Zora Neale Hurston.
We believe that Zora deserves to be a central figure in high school English teacher education and classrooms. We believe her writing should be in the hands and minds of students.
This work honors the 90th anniversary of Their Eyes Were Watching God.
An archival clip of Zora’s fieldwork in Florida (1928) plays, with her recording of the song Sloop John B. recorded in the Bahamas in 1935.
Zora & AP Lit.: Designing a Culturally Intentional Canon
This half - day workshop invites educators to engage Their Eyes Were Watching God as a foundation for AP Literature canon and lesson design. Using the Culturally Intentional Education (CIE) Framework, participants will design an AP-aligned lesson grounded in reflective inquiry, literary study, and collaborative praxis. Drawing from Zora Neale Hurston’s writing and fieldwork, the session explores research-based reading, writing, and dialogic instructional strategies that deepen student literacy and address racial and socioeconomic disparities.
Accredited by the Association of Texas Professional Educators for CPE credits.
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Their Eyes Were Watching God Seminar
Studying Hurston and the art of teaching novels.
As students increasingly encounter information in short form, the novel offers a space for slower thinking and deep literary inquiry. Hurston’s use of dialect invites teachers and students to slow down and study language in its living form.
Through Their Eyes Were Watching God, this 2 day seminar explores how teachers approach the novel as a space for narrative and linguistic study, and the interpretation of storytelling.
Guided by the CIE Framework, participants will engage in reflective inquiry, close reading, and dialogue as they consider how Hurston’s work can shape culturally intentional unit and lesson design and impactful literacy instruction.
