The English classroom at Cristo Rey Jesuit goes silent as a single student steps up to the board and stops for a moment to think, her classmates now shouting out suggestions and cheering her on. In front of her is an array of colorful boxes projected onto a large computer screen, and, after some coaxing from her teammates, she chooses one, touches it, and it fades away to reveal one of her vocabulary words from the week’s lesson: “Narcissistic.” At the bottom of the board is a pinwheel of activities. She spins the wheel by touching the interactive screen, and as it lands on “Act Out the Word,” her entire team howls with laughter and approval, and she laughs too, knowing they will win the point.

For English teacher, Andrew Hoyt, this is his first time using a SMART Board; “it completely transforms the way I envision the classroom space . . . anything we read, write, or discuss becomes immediately interactive.” By using the SMART Board to annotate an important part of a novel together as a class, Mr. Hoyt says that he and his teaching partner, Deacon Dan Addis, can invite the students to enter into the text in a way that simple encouragement cannot; “we can show them the way in. I can’t imagine a better tool to stir up excitement as our students take their first steps toward reading critically and writing eloquently.”