high school English curriculum

It’s been 18 months since my teaching certificate expired, the one I first earned in 1987. I haven’t taught an actual class of high school students since 2010. But that hasn’t stopped me from hanging onto all my old folders of lesson plans…until now.

Although the Mate and I left Tacoma in 2010 for Lopez Island, we didn’t sell our house here. We’ve been lucky enough to have housesitters who took care of all maintenance and utilities and still gave us the right of return whenever we (or other friends) had business in the Big City. But that’s about to change. The house where we became Northwesterners and raised our family is finally going on the market.

Which means we have to sort through all the boxes stored in the basement; divvy up furniture and dishes and linens to friends and relatives and Craigslist; curate, then cart a zillion loads of books and clothes and dishes and blankets and toys and who-knows-what-all to various giveaway sites we thought we’d already maxed out on when we moved ten years ago clean up a bit.

Why, I ask myself, did I even need to look inside the box marked “Old Lesson Plans”? Why not just throw it away? My certificate is lapsed. No former colleague is about to call me for best practices on introducing To Kill A Mockingbird.

My first gig, 1987: Orange High School
in Hillsborough NC

Of course I looked anyway.

I taught five–count ’em, FIVE–sections of 9th Grade Civics, each section a complete different planet of kids

Now, if you notice that the above picture is cut off, that’s not an accident. That’s to avoid showing off the last name of this one kid, Don S, who quickly became the bane of my first-year-teacher existence. Don was the kind of kid I learned to love–funny, basically good-hearted, but with zero use for anything that wasn’t centered around his ability to have a good time. I spent my first week of teaching doling out “LD’s”–lunch detentions–to Don. Like that helped any. 🙂

In those days, besides filling in the Plan Book, I wrote out a complete Lesson Plan on a separate sheet every day. Before I threw all these materials away, something called on me to take a closer look. To see what was so gol-durned important to me, at age 25, that I spent my precious after-school hours (when I could’ve been grading essays) honing in on.

Yep–one of these, every day. Good thing I only had ONE class to prep then!

And here’s what I noticed: that whole bottom portion of the form is given to self-evaluation. What worked, what didn’t, why, and how to fix it tomorrow.

Some days, I remember, it felt more like I was going backwards than forwards with those kids. (Can I get an Amen from any teachers out there?) And yet…I kept filling out those sheets, day after day, until, finally that self-evaluation didn’t need to be written out anymore. It was completely internalized.

Fast-forward to my latter years of teaching. Instead of one prep, I had FIVE. But here’s all I needed to write in my Plan Book.

Made perfect sense to me at the time!

What’s missing from that latter Plan Book is the same thing that’s missing from the non-existent Daily Plans I pored over in the 1980s. What took its place? Confidence. Experience. Trust. Did I also get a little bit lazier? Mayyybe…though more likely, as with most working-outside-the-home parents, anything that saves time is anything that saves sanity.

Mostly what’s NOT in these boxes is inside ME. Still. Thank GOODNESS I don’t have to box THAT up and take it to Goodwill.

I would love to hear any thoughts from others discovering emblems of their working past. Any echoes here?

“When he was thirteen, my brother Jem had his arm badly broken above the elbow.”

Two points if you can identify the book and the speaker of that quote; an extra point for identifying its place in the novel. (Note to my former 10th grade English students: you better know this one!)

‘Course, my post title’s a bit of a giveaway. And it’s possible that I’ve quoted imperfectly. Thing is, that quote’s from memory. Want some more?

“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy.”

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

“Pass the damn ham.”

OK, that last one’s not particularly significant–except that it makes me laugh. Which I guess is significant. Considering that To Kill a Mockingbird is, nearly 55 years after publication, still the most widely-assigned piece of literature in American high schools (along with Huckleberry Finn and a few Shakespeare plays), the fact that this densely-written, theme-heavy book filled with challenging vocabulary is also FUNNY is a minor miracle.

Harper Lee only wrote the one book. For decades, rumors have floated about a second one, but nothing has ever come of them. Until now. We get a prequel!

According to the New York Times, the recently-discovered manuscript of Go Set a Watchman “takes place 20 years later in the same fictional town, Maycomb, Ala., and unfolds as Jean Louise Finch, or Scout, the feisty child heroine of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” returns to visit her father. The novel, which is scheduled for release this July, tackles the racial tensions brewing in the South in the 1950s and delves into the complex relationship between father and daughter.”

The article goes on to say that Harper Lee wrote Go Set a Watchman first, but her editor, “captivated by the flashbacks to Scout’s childhood, told her to write a new book from the young heroine’s perspective and to set it during her childhood.”

And the rest is history.40 million copies sold, with a million still sold every year. Translated into 40 languages. Like I said–history.

(Courtesy Wikimedia)

When my husband, watching CNN, first told me of this news, I blurted, “That’s a literary bombshell!” He laughed. “Maybe to you English teachers…”

It’s true–I’m a lit nerd, and proud of it. All of us lit nerds are. But I can’t help thinking this is somewhat larger than us. This is an author whose career has been created–game, set, match–by A SINGLE BOOK, about which, famously, she has given no interviews for 50 years. And now–another book? This is much bigger than JK Rowling writing under a pseudonym.

I hope Go Set a Watchman doesn’t disappoint. Most of all, I hope its release doesn’t disappoint Ms. Lee. I hope all of us Mockingbird fans (even those who might have been forced to read it initially by a teacher like me) read it, have good discussions, and write Ms. Lee some more fan mail. But even if we don’t, let’s not speculate on or judge her motivations for releasing it now, at age 88. After all, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

What was your experience of To Kill a Mockingbird? Love, hate, don’t remember? Never read it? Well, lucky you. Just, if you can–read Chapter One aloud, in a Southern accent. Take it from a teacher–it’s so much better that way.