I teach sixty-five students English Three. This diverse group of students -- all but two of Philadelphia's zip codes are represented in my class -- will be heading into their fourth classroom of the year. We began in our "new" building but were forced out due to dangerous conditions. Then we spent two months in the basement of a nearby synagogue in a windowless room one-third the size of our previous classroom. From there, we came to the school district headquarters, where we read and argued in a room with a window that wouldn't open and no HVAC. On February 18th, 2020, we return to our initial classroom.
Throughout this chaos, the students have been magnificent.
First quarter consisted of reading pieces from the old New York Times Lives Column and writing "Lives" essays of our own. From there, we considered a number of short stories and assessed them through various literary lenses. During second quarter, we read Ta-Nahesi Coates's book Between the World and Me alongside Walt Whitman's Song of Myself. Students wrote extended essays for their own descendants, using Coates as a template and Whitman for section breaks. Their work shines. Their work inspires.
My Project
For the third quarter, sixty-five amazing students will be reading Shakespeare's King Lear and pondering the nature of identity, power, and family. Along with the play, which will be read and discussed in class, we will be reading four novels. In small groups, students will reflect on the themes of the play and connect them to the novel they're reading on their own. I hope that hearing of Lear's downfall, his notions of family and power, his ideas about loyalty and royalty, will provide a powerful basis for students to create a portfolio of original writing that integrates recent fiction and Shakespeare.
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