New Project: "Thoughts on Teaching ________"
a sharing of a teacher-designed resource and a wish for many more resources like this
Bringing something new into the classroom is a considerable ask of a teacher.
Especially in terms of time.
As an English teacher, this often arrives in the form of shifting to teach a new book that you have not taught before in your career. For me, this happened once again recently as I ended up teaching The Pearl by John Steinbeck for the first time ever.
What this shift required of me as a teacher:
Reading this book once again on my own time through a teacher lens chapter-by-chapter (different than just reading it for pleasure as I do many other books)
Creating chapter briefs on my own time to help guide my planning and avoid the “first time teaching this” issues I faced earlier in my career (example of one here)
Numerous conversations with a colleague during planning our planning time who had more experience with the book—and who I was very fortunate to have (a resource I decidedly did not have in other moments in my career)
Even though I had many advantages in making the shift to The Pearl this year—a knowledgable colleague, a relatively-short text, and 12 years of ELA classroom experience—it still ended up being a lot.
Especially, again, in terms of time.
Which was a reminder for me of the barriers that prevent many needed classroom and curriculum changes from [1] happening in the first place and [2] resulting in a positive experience for students and teachers alike.
Which then also ended up being the motivation I needed to finish a project from this summer: a collection of thoughts compiled together as a “teaching guide “of sorts for one of my favorite classroom books of all time: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.
Here is the link to the full project: “20 random thoughts on teaching Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God”
A Resource Designed with a Classroom-Lens
Important disclaimer: this is very much an imperfect guide.
It is a resource 100% based on the experiences of a single teacher working with this novel in various classrooms over the last decade. I’m hardly an expert and I know that many other teachers have many different perspectives on this remarkable, frankly miraculous text.
But what I also know? The vast majority of resources I tend to rely upon as a teacher come from people who have never been in the classroom—or only were in the classroom for a handful of years before fleeing for “greener pastures,” in their eyes.
That’s the main reason I wanted to make this project: I wanted to try and compile my own thinking and experience with this novel that I care a great deal about in one place in case it could helpful for others—especially those looking to bring this text for the first time into their classroom.
Because I do very much believe this book belongs in far more classrooms than it currently is centered within.
The guide consists of twenty slides (paralleling the twenty chapters of the novel) broken into two halves:
Ten slides with broader thoughts and mindsets that can be helpful, I think, as a teacher bringing this text into the classroom
Ten chapter-specific slides with thoughts, notes, and ideas of what to highlight in particular moments in the novel that I’ve found important to center
Here’s an example of what one of these chapter-specific slides looks like:
On most of the slides I’ve also embedded an audio clip with some additional reflective ramblings—not just reading what’s on the slide, but providing additional context about what it can look like in the classroom and suggestions I have for your own. (Example: this audio reflection on potential “obstacles” to be aware of with this book with students, especially for those teaching it the first time.)
I’ll repeat, though: this is not a comprehensive guide and my guess is that, especially if you have any experience with Their Eyes Were Watching God, you will find some aspects of it lacking or different than how you read and interpret the book.
I’m always open to suggestions to make it stronger, of course (and I’m grateful to those who have already looked it over and given their own guidance!), but stepping back I also think the imperfect limitations of this project are sort of the point:
What I Wish There Was More Of
I wish there were better teacher-centered resources out there created by teachers still in the classroom.
In our current moment of education when teachers are ridiculously overburdened and almost never granted adequate time for planning as is, the idea of changing anything in the curriculum is daunting if not also frustrating. As teachers, we know what it takes to make a change successful, and we also know that as teachers we end up being the ones who take on that burden.
For example, from an ELA lens, I think many of us are in agreement that the readings in our curricula are frequently outdated—often limited to “the traditional” canon” that is dominated by white, male voices. Many working in ELA classrooms recognize this, but even when they do there remains the challenge of finding resources to support the transition to newer, better texts.
As I mentioned earlier in the post, typically these “resources” consist of [1] individual reading/study of the text that takes a lot of time; [2] generic or limited online resources with summaries, etc.; and if you’re lucky [3] other colleagues who have experience working with the new material.
Lack of time and support to make needed curriculum changes, therefore, becomes a major impediment to those changes happening successfully. (Are there other reasons? Yes, but we’ll save them for another post.)
So while this project is admittedly limited, it also is meant to directly address #2 and #3: a guide based solely on classroom experience with the text (#2) and modeled off the hypothetical conversations I would have with someone wanting to teach it for the first time (#3).
My broader wish, however: that more resources were available for teachers that adopted these lenses, honoring the actual classroom experience with nuance and humility and also offering authentic reflections about what worked well and what was challenging.
Is that where we’re heading in a world in an edu-business landscape that is shifting drastically towards AI-generated content? Of course not.
But I can still wish for it, can’t I?