Lit class

I'm currently on vacation but not really since I'm here at my desk in my classroom thinking about what my literature classes will work on next. Anyway, I just realized what good decisions I ended up making previously, considering the four novels my four literature classes are reading right now. Teacher and students alike are truly enjoying these works.

My younger buddies (9th & 10th graders) are reading Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street, which is great for teaching. My bandmates might remember my very first lesson plan back in 2004, which sprang from this book- the one about similes and how a jelly donut could resemble a corpse. After all, the only thing students love more than food is gore.

I also have a one-on-one reading class with an 11th grade girl who is almost done with Of Mice and Men. A deathless classic, I know, but after doing this with classes several times now, I've attained a great Lennie voice "Don't forget about dem rabbits!"

My difficult all-boy's class (well, it's really only one difficult boy but that's all it takes) of juniors and seniors is knee-deep in Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. And finally, my honors class of 11th and 12th graders is reading a graphic memoir written last year by Alison Bechdel called Fun Home.

My schedule also contains two Composition classes, both of which are finishing writing college application essays and/or wrapping up work writing their original sequel chapters to John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces (another great read, but a long one).

So what's next?

My young buddies are hyper and love to run around the room and since several of them also take drama class, we're going to read aloud (and act out scenes from) Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun.

My one-on-one girl heard from another student who had me last year that The Catcher In The Rye was really good so she's keen on trying that. Who doesn't appreciate that one in high school, right?

The all-boy's class? Hmmm. I would say Catch 22, to keep with the theme of war/anti-war stuff we've been working on all year (we also read Fallen Angels and watched Dr. Strangelove) but it's so goddamn long. I remember getting sick of it in college, as funny and entertaining as it was to begin with. Oh, by the way, I should point out that these are all American Literature classes so that limits things. (I also don't wade too deeply into poety until the third quarter. I have my reasons- trust me).

My honors class has been begging me for a film after we finish the graphic memoir. I've worked with them for over two years now and one of the highlights of that class, for all of us, has been critically watching films. We do at least one Hitchcock film every year and write involved papers on them but it's hard finding another that's as rich for teaching as Strangers on a Train or Vertigo. The kids tell me they want to try a revered classic like Citizen Kane but I think it's more of a classic considering its historical significance and maybe not so thrilling if you're not a film major. A lot of those b&w film-buff favorites, as intriguing as they are (Rashomon, The Seventh Seal, et al) just don't fly well when you turn out the lights, draw the blinds, and project onto the dry-erase board. It's sleepy-time. Most modern films, of course, even those from the 1970s, are just too much trouble. You'll find that students will read all sorts of adult matter (hell, look at Slaughterhouse Five and Fun Home, for example) but once they hear profanity or see a sexually graphic scene, then they get all wound up. I also felt like a cheesebag screening only certain scenes from A Clockwork Orange in British Literature class last year when the kids were watching the whole thing with friends in their dorms anyway. Nonetheless, I can at least take solace in knowing that Clockwork was the very first novel some of the students in that class ever read cover-to-cover. It was also a treat hearing them saying things like "Slooshy this song on my iPod" or how they would "tolchock" someone in the "litso" if they tried to cut in front of them in line in the dining hall.