/lit/ - Literature

Nietzsche and Hunter S. Thompson.

Orwell's essays instead of his fiction.

Politics and the English Language

A Hanging

Shooting an Elephant

Homage to Catalonia if you want a lengthier work.

If you teach ELA in one of most states in America, your reading curriculum is predetermined by your school district. If it isn't what grade level and what class disposition (i.e. honors, college prep, retarded, etc.)

>>2488807

Nietzsche seems like it would be too dense, even for AP students.

I would like to teach HST, but I worry I'd get parents calling and saying that I told their kids to try mescaline; I stray as far as teaching Kerouac, so far...

>>2488814
Shooting an Elephant is such a brilliant essay. I actually felt as if time slowed down as he killed the elephant.

>>2488816

Honors and AP 11th!

We have a "pacing guide," that suggests what I should cover, but I don't really pay any attention to it.

>>2488816

this.

in my experience, teachers had some set books that was on the curriculum which was required but they could do other stuff in addition. do you know what's required?

also what grade?

>>2488827

>>2488829

Start with fight club and move on to Camus.

Sartre.

lol fight club...srsly?


I'd do Camus (and Orwell) though, if I wasn't supposed to limit 11th to "American lit."

David Foster Wallace

have them read Kafka's The Trial

>>2488840

I just googled him; looks like a neckbeard beta.

What'd he write that I should cover?

>>2488831
Don't give high schoolers Fight Club. They'll think that it seriously endorses half the shit that goes on in the book.

>>2488827
Niiiiice.

Keep at least one Shakespeare play and something out of modern theater. I'd say Glass Menagerie, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Long Day's Journey into Night or No Exit, for preference.

Read one long-ass novel and make sure you do regular reading quizzes on it because honors kids respond well to stricter requirements and are often capable of maintaining their attention. Be ready for them to suck at that though. It could be a canon classic, in which case make it one people have heard of, or it could be one of the more tasteful trendy novels like 100 years of solitude or the Satanic Verses.
And do one novella. An easy one. Probably the Stranger or the Trial or Farenheit 451 for the kids who need to be reminded why reading is fun.

Orwell's essays are actually a great idea for AP Lang prep, and I would say do some essays about writing and thinking critically.

>>2488836
Well, why didn't you mention that it has to be American literature?

Bartleby the Scrivener
Emerson's essay Self-Reliance
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Carver
Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut

Will you be covering poetry at all?

11th grade AP was American Lit for me so we read

Scarlet Letter - Hawthorne
Moby Dick - Melville
Crucible - Miller
Awakening - Chopin
Catcher in the Rye - Salinger
Huck Finn - Twain
Sun Also Rises - Hemingway
Gatsby - Fitzgerald

I suspect Chopin was required because lolwomen but I enjoyed everything else. Of that list I'd consider Fitzgerald, Twain and Melville most prudent/essential. Salinger and Hemingway are cool if you can include them.

Off the list, I wish my teacher had done some Faulkner (AILD or S&F seem most popular) and maybe Nabokov/Vonnegut. Flannery O' Connor I don't get to see a lot in classes but I love her stuff. Not sure if it'd be considered 'essential' though.

>>2488845
I posted the book cover again guys are you looking look at me

>>2488851
Oh wait you're stuck with American. That rules out like 3/4 of my shit.

For a novel you're stuck with Faulkner or Fitzgerald. Don't bother with Steinbeck. They won't read it or they'll hate you for it.
Hemmingway's got novellas and short stories. I do recall finding Hills Like White Elephants illuminating when I was in 12th grade.
Thurber and Ambrose Bierce for essays, I suppose, and my non-shakespeare theater suggestions stand.

Teach Ulysses. Then teach it again.

>>2488851

I like you! I'm going to try to incorporate everything you suggest!

Shakespeare tends to fall in 12th, but I'd do Othello if I could (Iago is one of my favorite characters ever).

And fuck the system, I'm gonna do at least one of these Orwell essays (Shooting An Elephant probs) guised as prep for the junior research paper.

>>2488857
Nabokov is a GREAT idea, but do Pale Fire instead of Lolita because school board. Also because Pale Fire is awesome as fuck.

>>2488845

>"Language Arts" high school teacher
>calls DFW neckbeard beta

>>2488859
This guy has the right idea. Fitzgerald and Hemingway are pretty standard, if I were a teacher I would try and work in a Faulkner novel (Absalom, Absalom probably) but that may be a little dense for general class reading.

>>2488856

I'm gonna be honest with you, new friend in /lit/.

I think Emerson was a hack who never had an original thought in his head.

>>2488859
OP, please don't force these kids to read Faulkner or Fitzgerald. Or Hawthorne's sprawling tome, if you have to do Hawthorne give them Young Goodman Brown, it's the same reason I said Bartleby the Scrivener and not Moby Dick.
Also Chopin can be a pretty interesting read, although again I'd say go for her short stories, especially The Storm and The Story of an Hour.

>>2488861

I can't even get through Ulysses myself (I've tried more than once), let alone teach it.

>>2488870

What makes you say that?

>>2488869
Why do people think English class should be about forcing kids through difficult shit and fostering in them a dislike of reading? Why?
OP please don't. I have nothing against Faulkner, but his style is confusing, don't toss these kids into his prose meat-grinder.

>>2488878
I hear you dude, and I take what I said back upon consideration. Faulkner definitely would not go over well in the general classroom.

>>2488876
>lacks reading comprehension
>teaching English

Those poor kids.

The Great Gatsby is a must, since it is short, weighty, extremely important in American literature, and one of those rare, great novels that is popular even among people who don't enjoy reading.

>>2488878

You should have some difficulty included so the non-Downies don't develop over-simplified notions of literature.

>>2488871

In the past, I've done Faulkner, but usually only A Rose for Emily. His other stuff gets tedious, in practice!

For Hawthorne I've tended toward The Birth-Mark and Rappacini's Daughter- fuck The Scarlet Letter.

Bartleby is the best thing ever, I had completely forgotten about it! Def. gonna write up some LPs to analyze it in the context of anti-transcendentalism.

Chopin kinda makes me hurl, but this particular set of kids has already covered The Awakening, so maybe I could do something with The Storm.

>>2488871
Faulkner might be rough. I remember having trouble with Faulkner as well. Hawthorne is just bad. Deeply unpleasant to read.
Now, if they can't read the Great Gatzby by 11th grade, they shouldn't be in honors and they won't enjoy anything else you send them either. That book was made for training 11th graders to read. Bartleby the Scrivener is harder, I swear. But also a very good idea.

I'm going to say Babbitt again because I think it deserves to be considered. It's pretty straightforward thematically and in narrative, and it's a pretty light read while being one of the most important satires of groupthink in American literature.

>>2488864

don't do long ass books. if someone gets lost from the beginning they'll just lose interest and it'll be just that much more a waste of a time.

reading quizzes are kind of bullshit too unless it's for easy extra credit since it teaches kids to focus on plot instead of analysis which is what these tests want. i know it's ap lang but it'll be better for them in ap lit imo if they just write some papers on the texts you cover.

and i love othello too but it's weak for shakespeare. macbeth/hamlet/lear/richard iii all better. and if you haven't read othello by 10th grade the school is doing something wrong. it's more introductory shakespeare than anything like R&J.

>>2488884
I posted my suggestions, and included Bartleby the Scrivener. That's a pretty difficult work to wrap your head around.

>>2488881

I'd like to think that I lack patience moreso than reading comprehension.

You read Ulysses? Did you find your effort to be rewarded by increased understanding of your world that was commensurate with the time you invested into deciphering Joyce's prosody?

>>2488827
My 11th grade lit assigned books was sweet, and pretty much most of the people with and semblance of intellect enjoyed this selection.

The Scarlet Letter - Hawthorne
Bartleby the Scrivener - Melville
Self-Reliance - Emerson
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Twain
Daisy Miller (Highly recommend you use this!) - Henry James
What Makes a Life Significant (essay) - William James
The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald
Passing - Nella Larsen
As I Lay Dying - Faulkner
Slaughterhouse Five - Vonnegut

>>2488880

if this was a regular class i'd hold back on faulkner too but OP said it was AP and he's too good

>>2488897
I still think it'd go right over the majority of their heads and bore them to tears. Faulkner's one of the most complicated of the stream-of-consciousness writers, which is already a complicated style.

where do you teach? do you teach in some urban city where AP doesn't mean shit or someplace where some kids actually give a shit about their classes?

>>2488877

I'm gonna contend that for any given pithy tenet expounded by Emerson, it has been expressed previously and less pretentiously by an earlier author.

>>2488890
>Macbeth and Richard the Third
>Better than Othello
No.
>Hamlet and Lear
>Better than Othello
My man.

Also I meant that reading quizzes should supplement class discussion and essays. Ideally they'd be a miniscule portion of the grade. You punish failure to participate by asking them a lot of questions they don't know the answers to and embarassing them in front of the hot bitch who writes poetry, not by docking their grades.

>>2488908

Your question is flawed. Some of my students give a shit, most don't. Much like anywhere else.

don't do any black or "african-american authors". some of the most trivial bullshit that people only read because they're on the curriculum as a result of pc guilt-tripped honkies scared of being sued

also if you do huck finn, don't skip over the word 'nigger'

>>2488893

Reading Ulysses was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

>>2488906
There's a lot to be said for pith.

But I'm opposed to transcendentalism on general grounds, so I can't really disagree.

>>2488845
I found his essay, Consider the Lobster, to be quite interesting.

>>2488913

my teacher only used reading quizzes as a last resort when it got really apparent that a bunch of people hadn't read. it rewarded people who did read by giving them easy as fuck questions and people who didn't bombed since they didn't know the plot.

she always emphasized discussion and spent more time trying to teach us how to read between the lines and shit though

>>2488918
Oh, that reminds me OP, you should cover Invisible Man by Ellison if you have the time, it's a great book.

>>2488918

lolololol

Picture very related. Maybe "Song of Solomon" by Toni Morrison as well.

>>2488938

See, for Morrison, we normally do Beloved if anything. I'm not familiar with Song of Solomon- why is it better?

>>2488935
That was always my preference. But it doesn't really help the kids who aren't reading. They might actually start reading from the middle, but it just seems more stupid and confusing to them because they didn't get any of the characterization or rising action or thematic elements introduced early on. I think it's safe to assume at least some kids will be bullshitting through the class and act accordingly early on.
The only question in my mind is if the damage you do to your rapport is worth the advantage of having a class that actually read the book.

>>2488946

it gets kids to read cuz they'll be afraid of failing the class because of some stupid shit like reading quizzes

I would suggest the following books, or at least excerpts from them.

Debt: The First 5,000 Years -- Graeber
Death of the Liberal Class - Hedges
Essays from something by Noam Chomsky, maybe "Hegemony or Survival", "Making the Future" or Hopes and Prospects".

Also try:

"Samson Agonistes" - Milton

>>2488959
>Implying any of those books would get past administrative approval.
You're like that kid who thought they should use A People's History of the United States in AP history.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON HUNTER S. THOMPSON

>>2488968
>Howard Zinn
Why not use it (as a secondary source)?

>>2488968
>mfw my 9th grade history teacher loaned me that book

>>2488978
Academically? Don't know. Haven't examined it's background. Politically? Because it's inflammatory and biased toward a particular (arguably more valid) political position that's going to start an unholy shitstorm among parents and fuck students over on the test.

I say arguably a lot because what children are taught is part of an ongoing, national-level public discourse and we don't get to just bypass public policy over what we think is true. When we do, we wind up breaking the academic mainstream and becoming isolationist in our thought. And it's not far from there to madness.

Anyone here getting worried about the quality of the class OP will teach as the thread goes on? OP, you sound like you should take a couple classes yourself.

>>2488990

if he teaches in an urban area, it's more likely he's there because he's new/inexperienced/bad

OP, how about some H. L. Mencken? His Scopes trial coverage would be an obvious thing to use, you could show Inherit the Wind, and it's good hilarious writing.

>>2488994

To me, he or she comes off more like a bratty teenager than someone I'd feel confident leaving in charge of a bunch of them. But at least they're coming here for recommendations, so that's something.

OP, how about some good writing that's not typically understood as literature? Many students might be interested in other topics, and good writing is good writing.

* History
* Investigative journalism
* Expository journalism
* Advocacy journalism
* Sports journalism
* Movie criticism
* Philosophy
* Essayists
* Science popularizing

This is off the top of my head. I'm sure there's plenty of good shit out there.

>>2488846
I read that shit in high school, and with some intelligent discussion with friends that had also read it, we realized that Tyler and his groupies were just oppressed male aggression, rather a neutral if chaotic force.

>>2489016
any examples?

>>2488918
9th grade was : you get white guilt! And you get white guilt! And you get white guilt!

11th grade AP english (are you Lit or Lang? This was Lang) for me was:

Twelfth Night - Shakespeare (might have been King Lear though, can't remember which year was which)
The Things They Carried - O'Brien
The Metamorphosis - Kafka
Frankenstein - Shelley
All The Pretty Horses - McCarthy
Of Mice And Men - Steinbeck
Like Water For Chocolate - Esquivel
A Farewell to Arms - Hemingway (this was one we were able to pick from a list of books that had been banned)

There were a couple more but I can't remember at this point. That would be a pretty good basis. For what it's worth, I found most of them at least somewhat engaging. Like Water for Chocolate I wasn't a fan of, the Hemingway was somewhat dull, and All The Pretty Horses was a slog to get through at the time, for most of us.
The best, to me, were The Things They Carried and Metamorphosis.

>>2489087
Do you not look at Discourse Analysis in lang?

>>2489123
Like I said, can't remember a couple of things.

Either way I did fine on my test, so clearly something was done right.

>>2489135
American school is so dumb...

>>2488845
how do you teach ELA and you had to google DFW? I suppose they just hand out teaching credentials after you drive around the block and parallel park in your district?

>>2489140
AMERICANS ARE SO SILLY, THEY THINK LOLITA IS AMERICAN LITERATURE

>>2489140

>>2489170
I REFUSE TO BELIEVE NZ IS THAT HIGH

11th grade English.... I don't remember too much, but the ones I liked were Frankenstein and Heart of Darkness. A lot of people will hate HoD initially, but if you give lots of political background info and biographical stuff on the author it will make it easier to comprehend.

For the love of god please dont make these kids keep reading anti-communist bullshit. This isnt the 50s-60s anymore. That's oudated nonsense.

I liked reading Gatsby a lot as a high school student. A lot of high school lit (at least for me) seemed to focus more on historical events rather than asking us look at things from a different perspective or kind of think outside the box if that makes any sense. I'm a book nerd regardless but I would have preferred to read things that actually make me think about the way I do things/live my life, etc.

I dont know if all thats too heavy for a high school student but yeah.

Do something different: teach A Clockwork Orange.
Also, if you do Shakespeare, do Julius Cæsar or MacBeth.

>>2489173

You shouldn't. The country may be retarded quite often, but as my education minister said 'If you look at all the professions in the world, you can gurantee a kiwi is in the top 10.'

It's true. Don't you realise the massive diaspora this country has? That that person you admire isn't Australian or South African or Chinese but something else?

I would cover satire with them. Have them read A Modest Proposal or some David Sedaris essays. It's something enjoyable for them to do and help them recognize it if it's on the AP exam.

>ITT: people who don't understand why teachers teach the same novels they have always taught

You don't just get to choose what the fuck you teach, guys. You have to work with what's available to you in the bookroom. This is why you are still being taught Catcher in the Rye, Hamlet, and The Great Gatsby. This is also why the copies are dogeared as shit.

>>2489218
When I was in high school, I had to buy every single book I read because I was in an AP class where I was required to annotate all of the books.

>>2488858
I don't think you could expect an eleventh grader to read that.
Also, I thought Infinite Jest was absolute shit.

TC if its possible, in addition to having a required reading list, you should have your students read a book every school quarter. (Back in my high school this was 2 months and a half or something like that.

I heard there was there awesome teacher and what she did was choose a bunch of books that she thought was essential to American Lit. and required them to read 4 of them throughout the year and write some responses on it and whatnot.

If you do this you give the kid some leeway in reading what he finds interesting but you're also allowing him to choose from a list of novels that you've already approved (instead of just allowing them to read any book by an American author; my teacher and some girl actually got to read Twilight, so its a bad idea).

>>2489218
From what I remember AP teachers have more leeway in what they can instruct their students to read. I know my teacher did.

teach grammar and writing. lot's of it. The less lit discussion the better. you don't think it is like is it but it is. Also grade for spelling and penmenship not just content. Your students will hate you and thank you 10 years later. This is high school English, and it's good for everyone.

>>2489260
This
&
..my advice would be don't focus on the classics "classics". Half of them are going to hate the book no matter what the fuck it is. I keep a real good souvenir of my last year of French (i'm french, obv) because the teacher just had a list of 15 books nobody knew ( the kind of mind-blowing book nobody knows because the author is more known for another work or some shit like that ) and simply asked us what we wanted to read. We voted and choose le procès verbal ( the interrogation, by le clézio ). 2.5 yrs later, still my favorite book. This book is underestimated because The Stranger is the overshadowing book when it comes to existentialist novels.

a fine example

>>2489945
>The Hunger Games
>The Kite Runner
NOPE.jpg
>A (it's "A" not "The") Game of Thrones
Most people will be bored and won't want to read it fully because it's big and has some shitty POVs.

>>2489959
I read GoT when I was 13 and loved it.

I feel bad for people having to read The Hunger Games though.

>>2489974
I know, but you see, there aren't a lot of people that can into reading like that. They need fast paced and easy reading things like Harry Potter (although I think the whole series is hideous). So I wouldn't recommend GoT so much.

are you guys seriously condoning fantasy as "literature" to a bunch of teens?

My 11th grade English class consisted of:
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- Cat's Cradle
- "Self-Reliance" by Emerson
- Fences by August Wilson
- The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder (my final paper)
- Julius Caesar

12th grade AP Comp consisted of:
- Walden
- The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
- Hamlet
- Macbeth
- various letters
- various speeches
- various essays (Orwell, Didion, etc.)


That's all I can remember.

>>2489945

>The Hunger Games

Why isn't twilight on that list?

why the fuck do high school english classes all have the same list of required books?

Train them to be bitter cynics.

>>2490201
>every student must lurk at least three boards on 4chan

The Crucible, asking the children to act it out and giving extra credit if they actually do it instead of just stand up there and read; add extra incentives if they still refuse, likes a free day or something, and don't expect all scenes to be acted out, especially between Abigail/John/Elizabeth.

If some act it out, they'll definitely remember it, and the Crucible is one of those plays that has enough action and 'romance' to appeal to both girls and boys.

2. I recommend doing an option, pick around 6 books, get the kids into groups, and tell them a little about the books and let them choose their own. Let them write down their top 3 and put them with the groups accordingly.

Good books for that are; Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, Fahrenheit 451, Death of a Salesman, A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, Dorian Gray, One Foot in Eden, Grapes of Wrath, Catcher in the Rye, and any other that appeals to a certain demographic. War books tend to be popular amongst high school boys, but so is anything action-related, so Fahreinheit would be good for them, as for the girls, and I know I'm generalizing, but you could throw in some more romantic stuff.

>>2490264
I'm sorry, but as a student who has been forced to do this by a lecturer, I can safely say that it is an awful fucking idea. Its not cool, it doesnt make the class edgy and exciting. You're just forcefully making the students make an arse of themselves.

Maybe there are students who would appreciate that kind of class, but not all of them will and as a lecturer, you should be taking everyone into account.

>>2490282
But I never said to force them, I said offer incentives to make them want to. They still don't have to, and I have to disagree, I think a group of four kids screaming about witchcraft does make a class quite a bit more exciting than just reading and lecturing.

Also, they usually can remember which character does what better, since their friend was up there, or they themselves were up there.

>>2490264
>don't expect all scenes to be acted out, especially between Abigail/John/Elizabeth.

When I read this in high school, we acted it out.
>I played Abigail.
>I'm a man.
>That first scene between Abigail and Proctor.
>Had to tell a fellow male student (playing Proctor) how I saw him 'sweating like a stallion" and all that.
>Laughter, laughter everywhere.

>I'll take /b/, /r9k/ and /hc/

>>2490296
hahaohwow
Bet none of the kids forgot that quote, though.

I was referring to scenes where Elizabeth and Proctor kissed though, or any other 'affectionate moments'.

http://www.amazon.com/50-Essays-A-Portable-Anthology/dp/0312609655/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=133202
1225&sr=8-1

Have them read and analyze essays from this book, OP. This should be their textbook.

Kafka - The Trial.
Leviathan - Paul Auster.
To teach them how fucking weird and unfair the world and your life is at times.
I had to read both this year(final year in high school), they were both quite interesting and funny in their own way.