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Additional Posts in English & Language Arts Teachers
I’m a 7th grade ELA teacher in Texas!
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It may be a little young for high schoolers but I think the Hate U Give by Angie Thomas should be required reading. My students devour it every year and it's sparked some seriously in depth conversations in class. I would run it by admin first but 10/10 recommend and I know a lot of other teachers do too.
We just did a choice unit with 10th for realistic fiction: Fallen Angels, The Bean Trees, The Book Thief, The Kite Runner, Peace Like a River, Things Fall Apart and Tale of Two Cities. This spring we’re doing choice memoirs: Trevor Noah, George Takei, Malala, etc.
Anything by Angie Thompson and Jason Reynolds are a huge hit with my high school students. They also get into Persepolis and Maus. They still love The Outsiders and Night as well.
Yes, to Jason Reynolds. Check out “Long Way Down.” My kids have also liked “All American Boys” which he wrote with Brendan Kiely.
Maus and Night are great. I read them for a nonfictional dystopian/WWII unit after we read
Fahrenheit 451 and multiple dystopian/utopian short stories. A nice shift from imagined worlds to a world that almost became our own not that long ago.
But I’m not sure WWII era classics are necessarily modern, though Maus is certainly more contemporary. The Book Thief is solid for WWII as well, being published in 2005.
I also loved anything by Pat Conroy. The Great Santini and The Lords of Discipline, being my favorite. If a class is more mature, Kite Runner be Kaleed Hosseini is a fantastic read that kids love.
Getting a a slight bit dated, but my students usually rank the novel version of Flowers for Algernon as their top read out of our 5 novels as sophomores.
I also read Lovely Bones when I was a freshmen and it’s memorable, not that I loved it at the time.
Book Thief is nice. My kids loved Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds. It’s an easy read, but captivating. They enjoyed Enrique’s Journey, the young adult edition. Unwind by Schusterman was another one they liked, with lots of issues presented.
for mature readers:
* works-in-translation: "woman at point zero" by nawal el saadawi. originally written in arabic, translated to english. not for the faint of heart, so make sure to get approval first! or "chronicle of a death foretold" by gabriel garcia marquez. originally written in spanish, translated to english.
* poetry: british poet laureate carol ann duffy. (she's LGBTQ+, so her love poems can be interpreted several different ways. but she writes about lots of different themes, from crushing on your boss to the horrors of the holocaust.
* non-fiction: essays by ta-nehisi coates. great range of genres and themes. (he writes essays for "the atlantic" and stories for marvel comics!)
* lyricists: why not approach the works of singers/songwriters bob dylan, janis ian, kendrick lamar, joni mitchell, paul simon or suzanne vega as poetry?
* drama: nothing wrong with using the classics, such as "the crucible" and "hamlet." or try "raisin in the sun." perhaps "blood wedding" by federico lorca. or try to get a copy of "a chorus line."
Golden Boy by Tara Sullivan
The Unteachables by Gordon Korman
Unwind by Neil Shusterman
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult
Ohhh, I taught Unwind and the kids really loved it! They were a bit freaked out at the unwinding scene (it was during the pandemic 😂), but they all enjoyed it. We looked at the issues of unwanted kids, adoption, medical ethics, bonding among outcasts, and so on.
Mentor
I got the youth version of Stamped the other day at Barnes and Nobles when hard cover was half iff
I started using Frankenstein with my seniors 2 years ago. It can be long but the kids seem to like it.