The senior editor at Alphabet Publishing, Walton Burns began teaching English in Vanuatu in the South Pacific. He has taught Russian oil executives, middle-school children, and Kazakh scholarship recipients.

Burns began selling lesson plans and classroom activities in 2007. After placing third in the BESIG business lesson plan content and winning the monthly One Stop Lesson Share contest, he began working for the Nick Robinson Agency as well as independently.

Since 2014, Burns has served on the leadership team of the Materials Writing Interest Section of the TESOL Association. He continues to publish his own lesson plans. His clients have included Oxford University Press, Macmillan, Pearson, Compass Publishing, 2LTI Testing, and New Horizons Language Schools. He is the author of 50 Activities for the First Day of School.