Teaching writing often feels less like following a logical order and more like making constant decisions about what to fix first. Should you get students to work on paragraphs when their sentences are weak? Why focus on elegant sentence writing when their stories have no point? And how can you talk about conclusions when they don’t even know how to write a first sentence? What finally helped me to stop spinning out on all the ways my students’ writing needed

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s masterpiece of a short story touches on so many different and fascinating themes, but it’s not exactly an easy story for most teens to get into.  This tale of an imprisoned housewife who slowly goes insane as she becomes more and more obsessed with the wallpaper in her summer rental is confusing, seemingly random, and on the surface, plotless.   As one contemporary of Gilman said, it’s “enough to drive anyone mad to read it.” Add to

I first started teaching Annie John in the early 2000s, and it’s always been a surprise to me that it’s not more of a staple in high school English Classes.  With themes of growing up and coming of age, it’s such a classic choice for teens, and yet it doesn’t focus on white boys and their problems, and so it’s refreshing and compelling.  (Now that I think about it, maybe that’s the real reason why it isn’t taught more often….)

If you’re looking for short stories for you American lit. class you’re probably either A) hoping to find something that will engage your apathetic students B) sick of teaching the same tired old stories you’ve had to teach year after year or C) desperately trying to piece together a curriculum after your department changed your teaching assignment again. The good news is that whatever else we might get wrong in this country, the American canon is not short on masterpieces. 

How do you teach students to actually understand how figurative language or other literary elements function to create meaning in a text? In my experience, the higher the level of thinking you require from your students, the more they’ll benefit by a breaking down of the steps to get there.  Sure, every once in a while you’ll come across a kid who can just naturally and effortlessly analyze a literary text, but honestly that’s like one in a thousand.  

There is so much incredible art to explore from the Harlem Renaissance that it might seem overwhelming to do the movement justice. This fabulous period in history is often taught as a side note to the Roaring Twenties or briefly paired with Gatsby, but there’s so much to teach—from music to fashion to essays to poetry to fiction to fascinating debates around what it meant to be a Black artist at the beginning of the 20th century. When I first

Ready to integrate more Native voices into your curriculum this year?   While trickster tales, creation myths, and other traditional stories definitely have their place in an American literature curriculum, it’s important that your students don’t get the message that Indigenous literature is only something from the past or something to read about in their history books.  In fact, if you’re not intentionally integrating current writers in your plans, you might be inadvertently giving your classes the message that Native

It’s the end of the school year—how can you possibly get your ELA students excited about learning when summer vacation beckons? If you’ve spent any time around teens, you know the ticket to success in their learning is giving them as much choice as you can.  When they choose what they will learn and the stories they will tell, they feel empowered and engaged.  And they know that you care about their interests.  But you also need to have some

I have come to admit that my students get more out of the books they choose to read on their own than almost anything I assign to them.  I also know that their lives don’t always allow them time to get lost in a book while they are surrounded by a quiet, calm atmosphere.  So when I can, I structure in some time for independent reading workshop including writing regular reading responses based on one of two different structures.   

I’m always on the lookout for a great new text that will impact my students and also be enjoyable to teach.  And when I do find that gem that has for some reason been hidden from me, I want other high school teachers to experience it as well.  I can get kind of excited about new discoveries, especially when they add diverse voices and views to my curriculum.  I created this unit on “Sweat”  and now I want everyone to