On January 20, 2021, Amanda Gorman faced a unique challenge. The youngest inaugural poet in United States history, Gorman wanted her poem “The Hill We Climb” to “envision a way in which our country can still come together and can still heal” without “erasing or neglecting the harsh truths . . . America needs to reconcile with.” Studying “The…
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We’re sharing several of our favorite websites and resources for you hardworking teachers out there.
Let’s look at five essential literary elements in Part 2 of this ongoing series.
Poetry selections in high school are too often limited to a hallowed few—Shakespeare and Petrarch, Whitman and Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and perhaps Billy Collins—if poetry is included at all. While these canonized favorites can enhance any unit of study, they can leave students feeling like poetry is a thing of the past, which…
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For many students, reading comes naturally. It’s possible your students probably don’t think about how they read—they just do it. So for those who speak and read English proficiently, taking extra time to teach them reading skills may seem redundant. However, all students of English—from those who grew up with the language to those who…
Do you have a hard time getting students excited about poetry? The work of Mary Oliver has long been celebrated for its simplicity, beauty, and clarity. Her rich, sensory language, exploration of the line between human and non-human worlds, and the frank philosophy that accompanies them, make Oliver’s poems fast favorites with students and teachers…
Every time I tell my middle schoolers that we are going to analyze the elements of a story, I get a big groan from about half the room. Somehow, it’s gotten into their heads that writing stories is fun, while breaking down other people’s stories is the most boring thing in the world. To combat…
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Herman Melville’s classic novel about the grand whaling voyage of the Pequod first landed on bookstore shelves exactly 167 years ago. Moby-Dick was widely panned in both England and the United States—Melville’s experimental style flew over the heads of most critics. But today the book is widely read, loved, and discussed. To celebrate the novel’s…
