What Would Be In Your Best High School English Class?

Fie on the 5 paragraph essay. When I taught, my students thought that this was the be all and end all of writing and attempted to go no further. But I digress. One assignment that really fired them up was: Imagine that you're locked in overnight somewhere. It could be a store like Wal-Mart, or a Theme Park, or a museum. What would you do if you had the chance to do anything you wanted? What would you eat? Where would you sleep? What would you do for fun? Another was Garbology. I collected items of "garbage," I made 5 distinct things. One for a single lady who was going out on a blind date, so that had a shoe box, tags cut off from an outfit, a scrawled phone number with the name "Charles" on it, etc. Another was from a middle aged single guy, newspaper with circled ad for hair restoration, take out menus, playing cards box, you get the idea. The assignment was to prowl through the garbage and then write a profile of the person it came from. My favorite was "Island Nation". Sort the kids into groups, they're now the founders of an Island Nation. They have to write a National Anthem, create tourism documents, write a charter, make a flag. It's fun, it's provocative and it can go on and on. Scrabble and Boggle are good for Fridays if you're inclined. I also did a Cause/Effect lesson using a Simpsons episode. Who ever wrote down the most cause and effect sentences won a box of movie candy. Newspapers are AWESOME, kids love 'em.

Depends on your personality, but I always really enjoyed these A contrary experience: I always really hated these. It was torturous to listen to students with reading difficulties struggle through their assigned parts, and I can only imagine how much worse it was for them. No one ever had fun with it. Even people who could read fluently just got through it as quickly as possible. Maybe it would have been different in a smaller school where the students in a given class were more likely to know each other. Seriously, when I think of bad high school English experiences, this is up there with the teacher who tried to teach us grammar but couldn't identify a noun. I don't have a specific suggestion, but a more general one. I would avoid assigning a novel unless the students get some choice. These are remedial students; reading a novel is going to be a lot of work and I can almost promise you that many will hate it no matter what novel it is. I was an advanced reader and I still hated being assigned novels, because if it wasn't one I chose it was a slog. I really preferred shorter works--short stories, etc. I got exposure to a wider variety of stuff, and if I didn't like something it was over soon. I think the graphic novel idea is awesome. I also like the idea of having a cool theme, like dystopias. If you do that, you could have an exercise where the students write a propaganda piece! That would be fun. (As a linguist, I feel like adding this: Teaching conventions is necessary, but telling kids that they way they naturally speech is incorrect is alienating, dispiriting, and unscientific. If you need to teach them how to phrase something in Standard English, frame it as translating into the variety that is used in that context, rather than correcting bad English. You may already know this, but.)

The thing I hated most about high school English classes was that no one ever taught writing, but we were graded on it constantly. I mean, we were told to write essays and that each paper was a test grade, but we'd only get one shot at writing it, and (from a high school student's POV), what's the point of revising something if your grade is already in and over with? Thus, we were never taught that writing is an iterative process, that it's supposed to start out crappy and get better through the process of revising and editing. Each and every paper was one shot, one grade, you're done. We were sometimes shown examples of the essays that got good grades, but there was never an explanation of why that writing was better (other than use of more SAT words). It's not enough to tell students "Your writing must be clear." You have to show them examples of writing that is not clear, explain why it's not clear, then show them how to get from unclear to clear. I actually really found the lessons in http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0071749136/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/ to be helpful for breaking down some of these concepts in a manageable way for my students. I join my fellow linguists to say that denigrating "slang" or colloquial writing for no good reason is elitist, alienating, and shows you don't actually care what the students have to say. The suggestions about giving the students multiple contexts for communicating the same story or ideas are excellent.

I love http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/157322331X/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/, by Patricia T. O'Connor. I think she has some other good books, as well. When I took English in high school, I hated discussions about symbolism ("What does it mean that this character smokes a pipe?"). It all seemed like BS to me (and still does). We read very few, if any, books that seemed relevant to middle-class kids growing up in suburbia. I wish we had been assigned readings that we might actually enjoy, instead of readings that were regarded as Great Literature. We read a lot of William Faulkner. I think very few kids could relate to his writing. With regard to writing assignments, I would have enjoyed some creative writing, or assignments that related to something relevant to me, as opposed to discussing the meaning of Hamlet or whatever. To be honest with you, I didn't like my English classes. The teachers seemed totally out of touch, the books were irrelevant to my interests, and the written assignments were tedious and pointless.

(I know you said you don't need teaching advice, but I only offer it because you said you were teaching mathematics, which is very different than teaching English. ) One of the biggest differences between teaching math and English is the volume of work generated by students and how you score that work. You may be slightly overwhelmed with the amount of reading and grading you will be doing. Please read everything you ask students to write. Nothing kills a desire to write more than knowing that no one is really going to read it. Kids learn quickly which teachers really read what they write and which ones are giving lip service. I always make it a point to write at least one thoughtful comment on what they wrote; my students really like that more personal feedback and they know I am really reading their work and they tried harder next time - which reminds me that another difference in teaching math vs. English is the amount of personal investment a student has to make. Students don't need to put themselves out there to share feelings about how they solved a math equation. Asking them to give/write an opinion on something is a much bigger risk for them. Once your students know you're invested in them and you read their work, they will open up more to share ideas and take more chances. Grading/scoring is very different from mathematics. Use the hell out of rubrics for scoring writing assignments. This generation of young people are being raised on rubrics and are used to them. Finally, in my experience, a good bridge to teaching poetry is using Rap/Hip Hop. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0671028456/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/ - one page is his handwritten version - the other the typed up more legible version. Also, "http://hiphopintheclass.com/" is a resource I've used a few times to draw kids in. Good luck!

I am an avid reader and was always good at school, particularly English. One of the books that I had trouble getting through? Grapes of Wrath. I worked in a library for a while and it was surprising to me to see summer reading lists for the local schools, because they included more YA or "hip" books than "great literature." (Though if I recall, the honors classes and AP classes included more "great literature".) Speaking to one of the teachers, they told me that they were more focused on getting the kids to actually read something that they might enjoy, even if it was not chock full of SAT words and symbolism, rather than having them struggle through the first couple of chapters and then give up because it was hard and not interesting or relevant to them. I would suggest going to your local library and speaking with the teen librarian (if they have one, if not, the children's librarian) and asking them what books have been popular with your ages group.

My favorite Steinbeck is Cannery Row, which might be easier to get through - and is also less blah with the symbolism and the breastfeeding of old men. Plus, who doesn't love a beer milkshake? If you've got students who have a hard time with reading, having them read out loud is going to be terrible and anxiety producing, plus it'll end up getting other students to zone out while their classmates are sounding out words. A dystopia unit would be cool. You could do some high school classics (1984, Brave New World), and also some modern YA (Hunger Games, Divergent, The Giver), and have students write their own set of dystopic laws, or argue for a way to fix one dystopia, or compare government structures, or use of language to control people, or any number of things.

Combining this: I really loathed academic writing and never saw the point (despite being OK at it) until I encountered a few writing courses with a rhetorical focus-- i.e., acknowledging that all writing is directed toward a particular audience, in a particular situation, with a persuasive purpose in mind. with this: (As a linguist, I feel like adding this: Teaching conventions is necessary, but telling kids that they way they naturally speech is incorrect is alienating, dispiriting, and unscientific. If you need to teach them how to phrase something in Standard English, frame it as translating into the variety that is used in that context, rather than correcting bad English. You may already know this, but.) As I am also a linguist- try and figure out where they're already doing reading and writing in life. Even if they have reading/writing disabilities, they're probably texting, using Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or whatever kids are using. They already know a ton about grammar and usage, it's just a matter of getting it out of their brains. Have them "translate" the same conversation: You just got in a minor fender bender. How do you tell your mom? Your BFF? The cops? Your insurance? Do you text, email, call, do it in person? What do you say in each case? They already know how to do this; the key is to get them practicing and honing their "educated" voice. I was an English major, but had good times and bad times in high school and college classes. The worst lessons were read a book, write a 5 paragraph essay about the themes. My absolute favorite teachers had us really interacting with the texts: One had us approach "The Scarlet Letter" as a mystery. Pretend you're a detective- who is Hester Prynne's baby's father? Why you think so? Or, write a eulogy for Jay Gatsby. Or tell Holden Caufield a story about a "phony" you know. Another had us read "The Dark Knight Returns" and then watch "The Dark Knight" and look for similarities and differences in theme. Another built the whole curriculum around "matching" books- Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre; Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead; Heart of Darkness and Things Fall Apart.

My english teacher for a lot of secondary school had us read the book we were reading together aloud, passing to a different student for each paragraph (he'd tell us when to pass it on if it was a lot of short bits). This resulted in hilarity, which we loved, and got people reading ahead sometimes to see what their line might be. Another teacher who I loved dearly, used to tell us stories if we were bored of doing something, or lots of us were a bit ill with the colds and coughs that used to go round during winter. They'd be about bizarre moments from his youth, were frequently a bit risque, and told with such wit and eloquence that he had us all enraptured, which often would carry over back into the lesson.