Heidi Marks Morris is a veteran high school teacher with more than thirty years of classroom experience spanning English, Spanish, and math. Over the course of her career, she has also worked for a nonprofit and served as a substitute teacher across multiple schools, giving her a rare, panoramic view of the education landscape. She remains in touch with hundreds of former students, many of whom have become colleagues and friends, a testament to the lasting connections she builds in the classroom.When Heidi returned to full-time teaching in 2020, she was struck anew by the challenges facing rookie educators. With half of all new teachers leaving the profession within five years, she felt compelled to offer the kind of honest, practical guidance she wished she had received at twenty-one. Using Stephen King's On Writing as her stylistic model, she crafted Teaching Matters to be genuinely readable, warmly conversational, and immediately useful. It is part memoir, part philosophical treatise, and part instruction manual, organized chronologically from setting up a classroom through the arc of the school year.Heidi lives in Grants Pass, Oregon, with her husband. Now retired, she is channeling the wisdom and joy of her teaching career into writing that serves the next generation of educators.