Recently an invite dropped into my inbox – did I want to swing by a school in my city to talk about teaching ninth grade English for them next year? They really needed to fill a hole for a year. Just one hole – one course, one period, one group of kids. For one year. Did I want to do it? If I did, what was my vision for the course?
Whew. Honestly the flood of emotions about knocked me over. On the one hand – maybe I could act on the ideas I’ve spent all my working hours cultivating for the last decade. How I would love to design my room, my booklist, my units, using all the materials I’ve developed and hopefully making a real impact in the lives of this class of students.
On the other hand – the struggle. The school was already using a textbook to teach 9th grade English and I wanted nothing to do with it. I imagined total freedom to craft the course of my dreams, but of course, the school would already have arcs and norms in place. They might not want a vigilante substitute looking to repaint and refurnish her classroom with stacks of choice reading books while teaching podcasting and multimodal memoirs, hosting literary food truck festivals and one-pager fairs and submitting to New York Times contests.
But maybe they would? I’ll be taking that meeting soon, but in the meantime, I’ve got a question to answer. What’s my vision for the course? So just in case you, too, are trying to define your vision for a 9th grade course, I thought I’d brainstorm right here with you.
For folks inside The Lighthouse, this will also serve as a fun look at how I’d use materials there to build my course. All the visuals you see in the blog version here are pulled from resources already available to you inside The Lighthouse.
Theme for the Year: Identity
The first year of high school sure does involve a lot of figuring things out. It’s a great time to focus in on characters struggling to figure out who they are, why they are, who they connect to, what they want, where they’re going. In short, identity. And while, in the end, I think any and every text can be connected to this theme, I’ll be trying to curate a collection here that will be helpful to 14 and 15 year olds looking for answers.
Core Text: The Outsiders
Yep, my first choice for this course is going to be The Outsiders. While it’s often an 8th grade read, I happen to know it hasn’t yet been taken for these 9th graders, and I can’t stand for them to miss it. In conjunction with this text, I’m going to want to explore the new musical on Broadway that a friend and colleague in my network introduced me to, and I’m going to want to have the students brainstorm and design apps to build connection beyond the polarized bubbles our nation has fractured into (greaser and soc-style). How will they do it? I have no idea. But I’ll be there to work with them on it as we consider what divides people, why, and how we might use the tech that so often divides us for connection instead.
Core Text: Romeo and Juliet
I’d be excited to teach this classic text. We’d definitely be looking at Akala’s Hip Hop Shakespeare, Gareth Hinds’ graphic novel version, Taylor Swift’s “Love Story,” and plenty of other multimodal iterations and interpretations. You bet we’d be exploring the Royal Shakespeare Company’s reels, the My Shakespeare site, and the Folger Library podcast, Shakespeare Unlimited.
There would be acting games and scene performances, definitely. Drawing on our work with Gareth Hinds’ (unbelievably wonderful) graphic edition, we’d wrap this unit by creating visual stories (maybe love stories?) and putting together a visual exhibition on the walls of the school, inviting kids from the younger grades up to visit. Possibly hosting a workshop for them on creating visual stories.
Book Club: Dystopia
Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, and Fahrenheit 451 are all popular reads for 9th grade. Rather than choose one and drill down, in this unit I’d like to go deep with dystopia and wide with texts, letting students choose the dystopian universe they want to explore and the author who will be their guide. I’d likely include Animal Farm and Fahrenheit 451, but also The Hunger Games, Dry, Feed, and maybe Ready Player One. We’d be talking about art and influence, and how authors often shape dystopias that make a point. But we’d also want to explore identity as part of our ongoing themes – what can individuals do in the face of social collapse?
I’m picturing a multigenre argument essay as a final pairing with this unit.
Core Text: Long Way Down
Here’s another powerful look at Identity and the forces that shape it. Reynolds’ protagonist, Will Holloman, feels completely trapped by the rules of the society he lives in. The central question of the book is: Is he allowed to break them? Talk about relevant for teens, as they try to navigate the norms and social obligations of high school, figuring out what actually works for them and who they want to become.
As you know, I absolutely love this book, and every single teacher I’ve heard from who has taught it has found it to be a tremendously engaging text students want to read. And that’s what I’m looking for.
A Choice Book Unit + Food Trucks
Choice reading would be an important part of any ninth grade class for me, along with a strong First Chapter Friday program. Sometime early in the year I’d want to kick that off with a full choice reading unit where every student read a book of interest to them, and then showcased their book back to their classmates with a literary food truck (snag the free curriculum here if you’re new to the literary food truck). This festival would be a strong launchpad for the program, since getting one book read and showcased would help initiate chat about great reads in the room and get the reading ball rolling. I can make a great pitch for a book for a student to read, but their best friend will always make an even better one if they’ve fallen in love with a book.
Short Text: “The Paper Menagerie”
Oh how I love Ken Liu’s “The Paper Menagerie.” It’s a powerful exploration of identity in the context of family and culture, there’s an audio version read by LaVar Burton, and it connects well with an “I am from” poetry workshop which I would definitely want to do with this class.
In fact, I might just launch into a poetry unit from that “I am from” workshop, as it has been a longstanding favorite with my students for generating performance poems for class slams. Which brings me to…
Poetry Unit: Performance Focus
Oh how I love a poetry slam frame for a poetry unit. I might just try to convince all the English teachers at the school to join me in planning a school-wide slam, but that’s pretty aspirational since I don’t know if they’d be interested. Still, a class slam, run by student committee, would already be great. In this unit I’d want to explore contemporary and canonical poets focused on identity, with a focus on student writing workshops leading to the creation of their eventual performance piece for the class slam.
We would likely run a poetry tournament during this unit, with a touch of argument practice thrown in as students voted on the poetry face-offs each day.
Memoirs and Multi-Modal Narrative Memoirs
Finally, we might look at memoir excerpts and write multimodal memoirs. We’d check out Trevor Noah’s “Chameleon” and then I’d feature it prominently on our choice reading shelf and pitch it as a read, because it’s amazing.
I hope we’d explore pieces of some graphic memoirs, like Perspepolis, Mexikid, Where the Stars are Scattered, and Maus.
Maybe pieces of Malala’s memoir, and Michelle Obama’s.
While we were reading we’d be working on our own multimodal memoirs, using the narrative writing unit I created this year, which I ‘m really excited about.
Further Directions
I’d also be interested in doing genius hour, the ethics of AI research project (grab the free curriculum here), a book club unit focused on mental health (which I’d have to create), and a theater unit on Hamilton (which I’d have to create). I’m not going to go deeper with those right now, because I’m not sure we’d have time!
Our Classroom Space
I’ve spent A LOT of time dreaming of my ideal classroom space, and this would be one of my favorite parts of the job. Describing my plans would be a blog post in itself, so instead I’ll point you toward the free classroom design kit I made last fall. An extensive library, flexible displays, flexible seating, flexible resources, elements of nature, a costume shelf, and a small writing makerspace would all be important elements of the spaces for me. Possibly a giant chalkboard wall. Definitely some kind of independent work counter as close to a window as possible. Classroom playlists and fun timers. A prize drawer worthy of the name. I’d have to be careful to remember to come home for dinner on days that I was setting up my classroom, that’s how excited I feel about the prospect.
