huffenglish.com
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Issues, ideas, and discussion in English Education and Technology. I began teaching English in 1997, and over the course of my teaching career, I have taught English/language arts or journalism to all grades 6-12 and pre-K.
huffenglish.com
1y ago
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
I’ve seen a lot of teachers on Twitter, or X, or whatever we’re supposed to call it, wondering what we are going to do now that Twitter’s demise seems inevitable. Twitter has been a wonderful place for educators to gather over the years. I’ve made so many friends through Twitter. I’ve also learned so much from teachers willing to share their expertise on Twitter. Believe me, no one is sadder than I am at the state of things. I don’t know the actual statistics, but I know I’m leeching followers weekly, and most have deactivated their accounts (or potentially be ..read more
huffenglish.com
2y ago
I recently found myself in the position of having to teach AP English Language for about five weeks. I won’t get into why that happened. I have never taught AP Lang. I think I’ve taught just about everything else! I decided it would be a good opportunity to do a quick unit on rhetorical analysis, which I have at least taught in the past.
For context, my classes are 70 minutes long, and typically meet three times per week. What follows below is a day-by-day plan for my unit. Feel free to use any of this. I borrowed very heavily from others and acknowledge or link to their work where I was able ..read more
huffenglish.com
2y ago
Robert Frost (New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection/Library of Congress) and Ilya Kaminsky (Slowking)
I have to admit to a love/hate relationship with Robert Frost’s poetry stemming from the fact that I wrote a research paper on symbolism in his poetry as a senior in high school. That kind of thing will put anyone off, and it didn’t help that I had what I’d consider now to be an inarguable thesis (essentially it was, yes, he uses symbolism—not much of an argument there). Still, not many people write poems about people getting their arms chopped off with a chainsaw ..read more
huffenglish.com
3y ago
Images used in accordance with Creative Commons Larry D. Moore CC BY-SA 4.0 and Fair Use for Educational Purposes
In my last three posts, I have described how my teaching partner James and I approach teaching Tommy Orange’s novel There There. In this final post, I will explain how we wrap up the study of the novel, suggest additional resources to use in teaching Native Voices, and share a summative assessment we use with our students.
James and I decided we wanted students to finish the entire Powwow section before we discussed it since that part of the book moves quickly among the d ..read more
huffenglish.com
3y ago
Images used in accordance with Creative Commons Larry D. Moore CC BY-SA 4.0 and Fair Use for Educational Purposes
In my previous posts, I shared how my teaching partner James and I prepare students for reading There There and how we teach the novel’s Prologue. In this post and subsequent posts in this series, I will not share day-to-day lesson plans; rather, I will share some resources that James and I have used. Our class is discussion-based, and if you are looking for discussion ideas, you might want to check out my blog post on discussion strategies and use or adapt them for discussing this ..read more
huffenglish.com
3y ago
In my previous post, I discussed how my teaching partner James and I approach pre-teaching or setting the context forTommy Orange’s novel There There.
The Prologue introduces readers to a lot of history that many of them might not know. James and I decided that this year, we wanted students to unpack the Prologue and generate the questions, so we used Marisa Thompson’s Thoughts/Questions/Epiphanies method (see this blog post) so students could generate discussion questions. Here is a screengrab of the slide deck I used with prompts for the students.
Tommy Orange makes several allu ..read more
huffenglish.com
3y ago
Tommy Orange discusses Native writers, his process, and his book There There
Is it just me, or is February the busiest time of the year? I’ve been meaning to start this blog series on teaching Tommy Orange’s phenomenal novel There There for a long while, but trying to carve out the time to write the blog posts has been challenging.
I teach this novel as part of a unit on Native Voices—Native literature and history—in a cross-curricular elective for seniors at my school. This elective is technically titled What’s Goin’ On: Social Justice in Literature and History. I team-teach the class with m ..read more
huffenglish.com
3y ago
Dana meeting Tommy Orange at the NCTE Convention.
About a month ago, I shared my conviction that it’s important to teach contemporary authors in the classroom and wrote a series of blog posts about the resources I use to teach Yaa Gyasi’s novel Homegoing. My next series will focus on how I approach teaching Tommy Orange’s novel There There. Stay tuned for these upcoming posts!
I team-teach a cross-curricular course in Social Justice, and There There is the centerpiece of a unit on Native history and literature.
On a slightly related note, I recently polled some folks on Twitter as t ..read more
huffenglish.com
3y ago
I received my course survey results, and the feedback has me thinking, as it should, about what I need to improve and what is working well. I have consistently received good feedback from students on connections between my class and other classes and connections to the world outside the classroom. I prioritize these types of connections in my approach to teaching. I consider it a high compliment when students express the opinion that something we did felt relevant.
I’m convinced that one reason students see these connections is that I approach teaching literature thematically. While tea ..read more
huffenglish.com
3y ago
One of my favorite things about teaching Homegoing is the redemptive arc of the narrative. If this book has a thesis, I would argue that it can be found in Yaw’s chapter, when he is teaching his students that those who have the power control the narrative and that it’s essential to seek out the stories that have been suppressed. I like to ask students to journal on this topic: How is Yaa Gyasi’s novel a response to Yaw’s argument about history on pp. 224-227?
I find Yaw’s story incredibly moving. I have yet to read of his reunion with and forgiveness of his mother Akua without crying. I like ..read more