The Joys of Teaching Literature

Be scared, be very scared.  I'm talking about the thesis statement, the be all end all of the essay.  Or is it?

It's fun to assign a personal narrative to start the year.  I'll talk about the ways that I try to inspire my students to write in their everyday storytelling voices.  

Start the school year with a revolution!  I'll talk about the first conversation I have with my students about the functions of language and all the reasons to love reading fiction.  

There are a few simple, easy things we can do to establish great relationships in our classrooms, which is the key to keep students engaged and excited to learn.  

It's way easier to teach Shakespeare by showing a film clip after your students read the text and do a close reading of a passage.  I'll talk about the famous balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet from P…

No, not that kind of drama.  Performance.  This week, I'll talk about how you can get all your students into performing, not just the theater kids.  

A few people suggested that I teach Beloved by Toni Morrison, so I gave it a shot last year.  I'll talk about the book and some of the questions Morrison wants us to consider.  

Students love to read fiction so they can understand another world in another time, but they also read to understand the world they live in right now.  In this episode, Elizabeth and B.H. James will …

It's important and also easy to talk about race and culture in school.  In this episode, I'll talk about racial literacy.  

Displaying student work not only adds to the literary culture of our classrooms and schools, but it builds confidence so students feel confident to share their ideas.  I'll talk about my experience a…

An organized classroom makes life easier for everyone.  I'll talk about how to plan organized units, set only a few due dates, and keep track of student writing.  

Last year, we adjusted and still managed to offer a quality education to our students.  But now, let's look at the ways we can make teaching easy, exciting and excellent.  

Every year, I complete my final assignment, a video essay where students reflect on graduating, what they've learned, and the future.  This year, we focused on the topic of love, so I called the proj…

It’s hard to imagine that anything positive will come out of this year, but I’ve been thinking about what, if any, lessons I’ve learned from teaching hybrid.  In this episode, I'll reflect on what wo…

Give your students an assignment to end the year that will be fun and meaningful.  In this episode, I'll describe how I end the year in my class.

There's a big difference between writing a story and telling a story out loud.  This episode is all about real life stories and their literary value.  

LGBTQ+ literature fits right in with everything English teachers do, including the the exploration of topics like identity and love.  In this episode, I'll talk about poetry, To the Lighthouse, and G…

Conversations outside of class can be a great way to bring new perspectives into the classroom.  In this episode, I'll talk about how we can ask our students to talk about literature with someone in …

For many students, this is a hard year to keep up with work.  Here are seven things I've been doing to make it possible for all students to finish this year strong.  

In this episode, I'll tell stories about the past year.  It's the audio recording for a video essay I created for my students.