Meet Laurie Ward
The Quiet Hare was created by Laurie Ward, an educator and curriculum designer with more than 12 years of experience teaching secondary and university students. Laurie holds a master’s degree in Secondary Education and a Ph.D. in Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum.
Throughout her teaching career, Laurie saw how often meaningful learning depended on teachers constantly explaining, redirecting, and carrying students through every step of an assignment. She created The Quiet Hare to offer a different approach: clear, thoughtfully structured resources that help students understand what they are doing, make their thinking visible, and work with greater independence.
Why The Quiet Hare Exists
Meaningful learning should not depend on a teacher constantly explaining directions, redirecting students, or carrying them through every step of an assignment.
Students need clear structures that help them understand the purpose of the work, recognize the thinking a skill requires, and make thoughtful choices with increasing independence.
Teachers need resources that support that process without creating more preparation, grading, or classroom management demands.
The Quiet Hare was created to bring those needs together. Its lessons, videos, and thinking tools are designed to make secondary ELA instruction clearer and more manageable while preserving the reasoning, interpretation, and intellectual work students need to do for themselves.
The Quiet Hare Philosophy
Quiet Hare resources are built around thoughtful, structured learning. Each lesson, video, and thinking tool is designed to help students understand the skill, recognize how it works, and apply it with increasing independence.
Clear directions and purposeful scaffolding support students without removing the thinking from the task. This allows teachers to introduce meaningful high school ELA instruction with confidence while reducing the need for constant explanation, redirection, or reteaching.
Many Quiet Hare resources are also flexible enough to support everyday instruction, independent work, and planned or unexpected teacher absences.
What Makes Quiet Hare Resources Different
Skill-First ELA Instruction
Quiet Hare resources focus on transferable skills students can recognize and apply across texts, assignments, and learning situations. The goal is not simply to complete an activity, but to understand the thinking behind the skill.
Independent Learning by Design
Lessons are structured to help students work with increasing confidence and independence. Clear directions, purposeful scaffolding, and accessible support reduce the need for constant teacher explanation or redirection.
Visible Thinking and Clear Modeling
Students are asked to notice, compare, explain, and support their ideas. Examples, models, and guided practice make the thinking process visible without doing the intellectual work for them.
Calm, Structured Lesson Design
Clean layouts, manageable steps, and intentional pacing reduce unnecessary overwhelm. Students can focus on the learning rather than trying to interpret complicated directions or crowded materials.
Realistic Support for Teachers
Quiet Hare resources are designed with the everyday demands of teaching in mind. Flexible pacing, manageable preparation, optional video support, and opportunities for independent work make the materials useful for regular instruction, intervention, review, and teacher absences.
Who The Quiet Hare Is For
The Quiet Hare is designed for high school ELA teachers who value clarity, reasoning, and meaningful skill development.
Its resources support thoughtful practice, visible thinking, and greater student independence rather than rushed completion or surface-level work.
The result is instruction that feels purposeful for students and practical for teachers.