Category Archives: Teaching Literature

Teaching Literature

“How Does She Do This?” Teaching Students to Discover Morrison’s Craft

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Collage featuring a young Black man with a large yellow sun and a lake in the background. A weathered white clapboard house and a dogwood branch are in the foreground.

I absolutely love teaching Song of Solomon. I’m excited to start it with my current AP Lit seniors this Friday. One reason I love teaching this book is that it rewards the patient reader, and it’s a joy to see students discover Morrison’s writing. I recently heard from a former student who graduated years ago, and he shared that he was re-reading Song of Solomon and still considered it his favorite book. One of my all-time favorite teaching moments was during a discussion of Morrison’s craft when a student marveled, “How does she do this?”

When We Know Too Much

I’ve taught the novel for about ten years, and I still discover something new each time. But familiarity brings its own challenge: the more often we teach a book, the easier it becomes to see connections our students haven’t yet discovered. We recognize the patterns in characters’ names, the recurring imagery of flight, and the significance of details that initially seem unimportant. Students have not yet learned to notice these details. With Song of Solomon, this temptation to make connections for students is especially strong because Morrison constructs meaning across widely separated scenes. But what do we take away from students when we explain a connection before they’ve had a chance to discover it?

Students discovering the novel for the first time benefit from the guidance of class discussion. Providing interpretations may help students understand a passage, but letting them investigate and reconsider details builds their capacity to read challenging literature independently.

One of my favorite examples is Magdalene called Lena’s rebuke of Milkman in chapter 9. She says

You have yet to wash your own underwear, spread a bed, wipe the ring from your tub, or move a fleck of your dirt from one place to another. And to this day, you have never asked one of us if we were tired, or sad, or wanted a cup of coffee. You’ve never picked up anything heavier than your own feet, or solved a problem harder than fourth-great arithmetic. Where do you get the right to decide our lives? (215)

When we reach this passage, students are often so fed up with Milkman that they are cheering Lena on. However, I ask students to note these tasks and think about what neglecting them says about Milkman. I don’t tell them why these tasks will matter; we will discover that information later. They might not understand the full significance now, but later, when Guitar sees Milkman help a man lift a crate, we understand Guitar’s belief that Milkman must be moving the gold to keep for himself. After all, he’s never lifted anything heavier than his own feet. We also understand the significance of the small tasks he performs for Sweet:

He made up the bed. She gave him gumbo to eat. He washed the dishes. She washed his clothes and hung them out to dry. He scoured her tub. She ironed his shirt and pants. He gave her fifty dollars. She kissed his mouth. He touched her face. She said please come back. He said I’ll see you tonight. (285)

This contrast becomes evidence of Milkman’s transformation. He begins doing some of the very things Lena claims he has never done. After reading this passage about Sweet, we return to Lena’s earlier rebuke, but that’s not the most important teaching move. The critical move is not announcing the connection in advance. When students recognize the connection between these two passages themselves, it is more powerful than if I had told students what to look for. Not every student will notice the connection independently, but class discussion can bring out those “a-ha” moments and help students see how Morrison rewards readers who make connections.

Withholding Interpretations Isn’t Withholding Support

Withholding interpretations doesn’t mean I am withholding support. When reading a writer as complex as Toni Morrison, students need frameworks. I provide this guidance through a reader’s notebook and inquiry routines:

  • Scene Study helps students consider how a scene functions.
  • Character Mirror invites them to analyze characters in relation to one another.
  • Symbol Tracker helps them trace recurring details.
  • MOWAW Reflection encourages them to connect individual moments to the novel’s larger meaning.

These structures don’t tell students what conclusions to draw or what interpretation I’m looking for. Instead, they help students develop the reading habits that strengthen their interpretations. A question I frequently return to is “What makes you say that?” It drives students into the text to support their ideas with evidence. Inquiry requires careful instructional design and, sometimes, more preparation and more deliberate teacher moves than direct instruction.

Learning to Change Our Minds

Morrison repeatedly asks readers to revise their understanding as new information emerges. For example, students (and Milkman) begin with incomplete information about Milkman’s family, but they follow his journey of discovery as he fills in the gaps in his family tree. Macon and Pilate remember the details surrounding their father’s death differently, though their stories correspond in interesting ways. Students learn that changing your interpretation isn’t evidence of misunderstanding. In fact, it shows you’re learning to read more deeply. Teaching this novel requires a classroom culture that makes students feel comfortable expressing uncertainty, testing their interpretations, and revising their thinking.

Years after taking my class, students will not remember every detail about Milkman’s family history. But I hope they will remember how to approach a complex work: pay attention, ask questions, notice patterns, listen to other interpretations, and remain willing to reconsider. The goal is to help students become readers who can develop their own interpretations of whatever they encounter next.

I’ve recently finished rebuilding my Song of Solomon unit for The Inquiry Classroom, drawing on nearly a decade of teaching the novel and refining the activities that help students make these discoveries. It includes 14 complete lessons, reading notebooks, reusable Inquiry Routines, staged family-tree reveals, collaborative investigations, and a student-selected literary analysis assignment.  Longtime readers of this blog may recall that I teach Beyoncé’s Lemonade album alongside Song of Solomon, and I’ve included tips for this optional extension. Check out this resource below.

Cover for Song of Solomon unit featuring the text: Teaching Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison, Teacher Guide and An Inquiry-Based Unit for Exploring Identity, Family History, Ancestry, and Freedom Through Literature. The featured image is a collage with a young Black man, a large yellow sun and lake in the background, and a dogwood branch and weathered clapboard house in the foreground.

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Teaching Literature

How I Teach Critical Lenses So Students Actually Use Them

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Students finish reading a chapter and ask:

“What does it mean?”

or

“What’s the right interpretation?”

Many students see literary analysis as guessing what the teacher is thinking.

The problem wasn’t that my students couldn’t think deeply. They didn’t yet have a framework for asking productive questions.

Like many teachers, I started with existing critical theory resources. They were academically accurate, but I found they didn’t give high school students enough guidance or help them understand why the lenses mattered in the first place.

Critical lenses aren’t about memorizing theory. They’re about learning different ways to approach a text.

Critical lenses don’t change the text; they change what we notice.

Different readers naturally notice different things in a text. We all bring our experiences, beliefs, biases, and identities to what we read. However, trying on different critical lenses allows us to develop stronger interpretations and more valuable insights. More importantly, they help us develop empathy and understanding for others. That’s one of the reasons I believe critical lenses belong in every English classroom, not just AP Literature.

Students need to see a model for how to read using critical lenses. They benefit from a common text, ideally something short that everyone is reading together and that invites a variety of interpretations. I used to use The Great Gatsby because students typically read it the year before AP Literature, and they are mostly familiar with it. However, I discovered that not all my students read it, and not all the students who had remembered it could recall it well enough. Once I realized students needed to experience critical lenses before defining them, I stopped looking for a text and started looking for a common experience.

Enter American Gothic.

Image of the painting American Gothic by Grant Wood depicting a balding male farmer holding a pitchfork and wearing overalls and a jacket with a woman in a red print apron, wearing a cameo, and her hair is pulled back. They stand in front of a farmhouse with a gothic window.

Instead of beginning with literary theory, I begin with one familiar image.

Most students are familiar with this painting, but they don’t even have to have seen it before for this activity to work. I essentially take students through each of the critical lenses I’ve found most helpful and ask them questions about what they see through each lens. If students are stuck, I might guide them to notice a few things. For example, when using a Feminist Lens, I might suggest the figures’ placement and clothing reveal something about their gender roles. When using an Ecocritical Lens, I might suggest the only nature visible is a set of manicured trees, relegated to the periphery of the canvas.

Students look at the same painting repeatedly. Only the questions change. The image stays the same. That’s when they realize what a critical lens actually is: a different way of seeing the text.

Every year, there’s a moment when the room changes. For my students, it often happens during the Queer Theory example. They suddenly realize that the painting hasn’t changed; their thinking has. More specifically, the questions they’re asking have changed.

After I hit upon this method for teaching critical lenses, I guide students through

  • learning individual lenses
  • to choosing a lens
  • to comparing lenses
  • to combining lenses
  • to writing through a lens

As a result, their analysis was sharper. One student shared that she wished she had learned critical lenses years ago. She said, “It would have saved me so much time getting started with a literary analysis!”

After years of refining this sequence in my own classroom, I finally organized it into a complete Critical Lenses curriculum. It includes the modeling lesson, teacher guide, student handouts, application activities, and planning tools I use to help students become more thoughtful, independent literary readers. If you’re looking for a way to help students move beyond plot summary and begin asking richer questions about literature, I hope this resource helps your students experience the same “aha!” moment mine do every year.

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Teaching Literature

Teaching Students to Read What’s Unsaid in Never Let Me Go

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casette tape with tape pulled out and looped in a pile
Photo by Etienne Girardet

One of the biggest challenges of teaching Never Let Me Go isn’t helping students understand the plot. The plot is fairly straightforward. Students tend to have more difficulty understanding how to read the novel.

Many students approach the book as if it were a mystery. They spend the first half asking, “What’s really going on?” and become frustrated by the unanswered questions. While curiosity is part of Ishiguro’s design, it’s not the novel’s primary challenge.

The real challenge is learning to read Kathy’s narration, which makes it perfect for teaching the AP® Lit CED skills on narration:

  • 4. A  Identifyanddescribe the narrator or speaker of a text.
  • 4. B  Identify andexplainthe function of point of view in a narrative.
  • 4. C  Identify and describe details, diction, or syntax in a text that reveal a narrator’s or speaker’s perspective. 
  • 4. D Explainhowanarrator’sreliabilityaffectsa narrative.

Students often assume that if a narrator leaves things out, they’re being deceptive. Kathy isn’t lying to readers. Instead, she remembers selectively, revisits events with new understanding, and tells her story through the imperfect lens of memory.

That distinction changes everything.

Instead of asking “what happened?”, students begin asking:

  • Why does Kathy remember this?
  • What doesn’t she fully understand?
  • What is Ishiguro asking readers to infer?

Once I realized this, I stopped organizing my unit around plot developments and started organizing it around interpretive moves.

Each lesson asks students to practice a different way of reading:

  • noticing what is withheld
  • examining how memory shapes meaning
  • investigating emotional subtext
  • tracing patterns of delayed revelation
  • building literary arguments from inference rather than summary

The goal becomes helping students learn how to read the novel rather than simply finish it.

When students begin reading Kathy’s narration instead of chasing answers, they notice that the novel’s emotional power doesn’t come from surprising revelations.

It comes from the gradual realization that readers, like Kathy herself, have been living with an incomplete understanding all along.

That’s a much richer reading experience, and it leads to more thoughtful discussions and stronger analytical writing.

That shift in my thinking became the foundation for my inquiry-based Never Let Me Go unit.

The resource includes seven lessons built around narration, memory, identity, structure, and ethical inquiry, along with original activities, writing instruction, Socratic seminar materials, quizzes, and teacher resources designed for AP Literature, IB Literature, and advanced high school English courses.

If you’re looking for a unit that helps students move beyond plot summary and into genuine literary interpretation, I hope you’ll find it useful.

Title card for Never Let Me Go Unit that says Complete Novel Unit for Advanced Literary Study and Inquiry-Based Lessons | AP Lit & IB Lit | Editable Slides

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Teaching Literature

TPCASTT, 15 Years Later: What I’d Keep, Change, and Add

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A collection of books on a table with a sign that says "Poetry."
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

I first heard about TPCASTT from Lisa Huff and shared the resource on my blog 15 years ago. It works really well for giving students a starting place for analyzing poetry. It helped me solve a problem I was having when teaching poetry: how do students start analyzing poetry?

I’m still using TPCASTT in my classroom all these years later. However, I’m not using it in quite the same way.

TPCASTT reduces anxiety for students who feel intimidated by poetry. It forces students to read closely and re-read, which is essential for poetry. Students need to contemplate the poem’s title. They need to synthesize their learning. It builds analytical habits that move students beyond summarizing the text. If a student has no entry point into a poem, TPCASTT still provides one of the most reliable scaffolds I know.

However, in the years I’ve used TPCASTT, I’ve uncovered some limitations. It can become mechanical; students may go through the steps in the formula without really thinking. It can also emphasize completion over insight. Students might arrive at interesting ideas, but feel compelled to fill in every part of the worksheet rather than pursue those ideas further.

Students sometimes delay thinking about the poem until they’ve gone through all the steps, which can get in the way of genuine interpretation. Over time, I realized some students were analyzing poems without actually experiencing them.

Students also get stuck on some of the steps. For example, paraphrasing can trip students up. While I understand the rationale, I often encourage students to summarize instead, focusing on what’s essential rather than translating line by line. “Connotation” encourages students to look beyond the literal, but it’s not always the most accessible term for what I want them to do: examine figurative language and layers of meaning. I’ve seen some teachers adapt the acronym (for example, TPFASTT) to reflect that shift.

TPCASTT can also result in formulaic statements about theme (“The theme is that…), often without much depth. Occasionally, students even reference the tool itself in their writing, which defeats the purpose. The goal is for TPCASTT to support analysis, not become the analysis.

Another challenge is that not all poems fit neatly into the structure. Students sometimes try to shoehorn a poem into the formula rather than using the formula to better understand the poem.

Because of these limitations, I’ve made a few shifts in how I use TPCASTT.

The first shift was making it optional rather than mandatory. I introduce it as one of several tools for analyzing poetry. I emphasize that if it’s getting in the way, students can adapt it or try a different approach. That said, it remains especially helpful for students who are newer to poetry or who feel stuck.

Another shift is that I don’t start with TPCASTT. Instead, we read the poem, often more than once. I begin with open-ended questions like “What do you notice?” and “What do you wonder?” The first reading is about experiencing the poem: noticing patterns, reacting, and annotating. If we use TPCASTT, it comes after that initial engagement, not before.

I also encourage students to compress or combine steps. Students sometimes assume each step should become a paragraph in an essay, which leads to formulaic writing. In reality, some steps naturally belong together. For example, title and theme often connect, and what TPCASTT calls “connotation” and “attitude” can merge into a discussion of tone and meaning.

I prioritize discussion over completion. Rather than focusing on filling out a worksheet, we spend more time asking questions like, “Where do you see a shift?” or “What feels different here?” or “What is the speaker really wrestling with?” These questions tend to generate more meaningful analysis than completing each step in order.

Over time, I’ve also added a few elements that TPCASTT doesn’t explicitly address. I try to build in more space for students to generate their own questions about a poem. I encourage multiple interpretations rather than pushing toward a single “correct” theme. We talk more about why a poem matters, what it says about human experience, and why it might still resonate.

Sometimes, that also means reading the poem aloud, more than once, and paying attention to how it sounds. Tone, rhythm, and meaning often emerge more clearly when students hear the poem rather than just see it on the page.

After all these years, I still find TPCASTT useful. It’s a strong starting point, especially for students who need structure. But I’m less interested now in whether students can “do TPCASTT” correctly and more interested in whether they can sit with a poem long enough to make meaning from it.

TPCASTT helped my students, and me, learn how to begin. Fifteen years later, I think of it as one way in, not the way in.

If you still use TPCASTT, I’d love to hear how your approach has evolved.

Feel free to download this TPCASTT Reimagined handout for use with your students.

Teaching Literature

How I Teach Structure in Mrs. Dalloway (Not Just Stream of Consciousness)

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Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith from Mrs. Dalloway rendered in a cubist styleBelieve it or not, Mrs. Dalloway might be one of my favorite books to teach. It definitely presents many challenges. It doesn’t divide neatly into chapters. It’s non-linear. It’s written in a stream of consciousness. Students struggle with it. Honestly, many teachers struggle with it! Common approaches, such as teaching the traditional plot arc (Freytag’s Pyramid) or teaching character development, simply don’t work with Mrs. Dalloway. The real difficulty students face when reading this novel is that they don’t understand its structure. The problem isn’t that students can’t read Mrs. Dalloway. It’s that they don’t yet know how to read a novel that isn’t built like a novel they’ve seen before.

The key move for me was to approach the novel’s structure rather than teach its style. While Woolf is experimenting stylistically in this novel, she’s doing much more than trying out stream of consciousness. She is playing with time and perspective. Characters’ thoughts turn to the past and move back to the present as seamlessly as our own. She follows the thoughts of several characters all at once. Moments that take place over seconds are stretched across pages. She juxtaposes the past and the present, characters, and events. Patterns reveal themselves. Once students see the structure, the novel becomes readable.

I approach teaching Mrs. Dalloway with three strands: Time and the Persistence of Memory; Sanity, Illness, and Social Authority; and Social Performance and Private Identity. These strands converge at the novel’s end when Clarissa learns of Septimus’s death at her party.

Time and the Persistence of Memory approaches the chiming of Big Ben as structure, not simply background. Memory consistently interrupts the present, as Clarissa thinks about her kiss with Sally and her days at Bourton. Time is pressure, not just a sequence of moments.

Sanity, Illness, and Social Authority focuses on teaching Septimus’s story not as a side plot but as a critical element of the story. In Septimus’s arc, institutions, represented by Dr. Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw, define “normal” and exert their authority. The language of authority matters: Bradshaw controls his patients through Proportion and Conversion.

Social Performance and Private Identity examines Clarissa’s performance at her party. It focuses on how she appears publicly, in contrast to her private thoughts, and treats the party as the novel’s structural convergence.

These strands give students a way to track patterns throughout the novel rather than reading it as a series of disconnected moments. They begin to see how Woolf builds meaning structurally rather than through plot.

One example lesson I teach introduces students to Woolf’s use of time as a structural force rather than a background detail through a close reading of the introduction of Big Ben’s chimes, a motif that runs through the novel.

First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air.

Students take apart the first sentence. What do these two parts suggest about time? Why construct the sentence in two parts? I play the Westminster chimes of Big Ben for students and ask them what it might be like to hear those chimes marking every hour of your life. Students invariably notice the pressure that time exerts when marked in this way, but also, there is a collective experience””time is a shared experience. Structurally, the sentence also prepares students for how to read this novel as a whole. I guide students to pay attention to the semicolon, acting as a hinge.

Students then analyze the novel’s beginning in small groups. They track how Woolf moves in and out of Clarissa’s mind, identifying where those shifts occur, what triggers them, and what changes as a result. It’s important to affirm that students do not need to be right; they just need to notice the structural movement.

As a class, we examine the Trigger → Shift → Effect pattern as a way of tracking how Woolf moves between consciousnesses. We discuss patterns, noting external triggers (such as sounds, movements, memory cues) and how they lead to an internal shift. Then we discuss the emotional or temporal effect of that shift.

I guide students to notice that time does not move linearly, and they reflect on how Woolf’s description of Big Ben suggests that time exerts pressure on characters.

When I approach the novel through structural focus, students stop asking “What is happening?” and start to notice “Why is Woolf structuring the novel this way?” Students can grasp concepts such as structure, meaning, and complexity with this focus.

When I first taught this novel, I didn’t know how to approach it and resorted to cobbling lessons together based on a few things I could find online. Over time, I realized I needed a more coherent way to teach the novel, not just a series of lessons, but a structure that helped students build understanding across the unit. I ended up building a full unit organized around these ideas, including lesson plans, slides, and multiple assessment pathways.

My full Mrs. Dalloway unit includes lesson plans, slides, and assessments built around this structure.

Teaching this novel matters, even in an age when students increasingly struggle to focus and are losing reading stamina. Students deserve opportunities to meaningfully experience difficult reading. Understanding structure is a skill they can transfer to other reading and other complex texts. It’s worthwhile: when this novel hits, it cracks open new worlds for students.

Assessment, Teaching Literature

Setting in Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing

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Homegoing

In reviewing feedback on my students’ AP Literature* exam scores, I observed that they scored lower on the skills connected to explaining the function of setting. I use Yaa Gyasi’s novel Homegoing to teach these skills:

    • 2.A: Identify and describe specific textual details that convey or reveal a setting.
    • 2.B: Explain the function of setting in a narrative.
    • 2.C: Describe the relationship between a character and a setting.

Homegoing is a perfect text for teaching the function of a setting because of the overwhelming influence setting has on the characters. I typically teach this book with a discussion-heavy approach, which works well when you have classes that love discussion. I currently have a great class that loves to discuss the literature we are reading; however, I’m also approaching my teaching in general with more small-group activities designed to engage students in the text. I created a setting-based activity I plan to use in teaching Homegoing this year. It’s called “Setting as Shaper.”

As students read, they will annotate or collect 4-6 specific setting details, then sort them into categories:

  • Physical environment (landscape, buildings, climate, geography)
  • Social structures (laws, customs, power systems, economics)
  • Historical moment (era-specific realities shaping daily life)
  • Psychological atmosphere (fear, safety, confinement, belonging)

When they annotate, quote, or paraphrase the detail, they should identify where it appears and label the category.

After each reading, students will convene with a small group in class and discuss their observations. The group will select two setting details and answer: “What is the setting doing to the character in this chapter?”

Students will either choose from the following list or add your own idea:

  • Restricting choices
  • Enabling survival or resistance
  • Reinforcing power hierarchies
  • Shaping identity or self-perception
  • Creating generational trauma
  • Offering false or fragile safety
  • Forcing moral compromise

After their discussion, they will write a 1-2 sentence claim about the setting in the chapter: In this chapter, the setting functions to ________, which shapes ________.

I am also going to have students create concept maps for each chapter. For Effia’s chapter, students will create a Belonging Map (see details below).  The guiding questions for this particular chapter: Where does Effia belong? And where is she erased?

Effia’s chapter is fundamentally about conditional belonging. The Cape Coast Castle is simultaneously:

  • a site of privilege and protection
  • a site of moral erasure and violence

This map helps students analyze:

  • how Effia belongs only by ignoring certain spaces
  • how physical proximity does not equal moral or emotional access

Instructions for the Belonging Map:

  1. Draw concentric circles:
    1. Inner = belonging
    2. Middle = conditional belonging
    3. Outer = exclusion or danger
  2. Place locations, naming:
    1. Who grants or denies belonging?
    2. What is the cost of belonging?
  3. Unpack belonging maps together as a class.

Maps in Homegoing

Chapter Type Map Applicable Chapters
Confinement / institutional Pressure Map “Esi,” “Ness,”  “H”
Movement / transition Before/Inside/After “Kojo,” “Abena,” “Yaw,” “Marcus”
Moral compromise Moral Geography “Akua,” “Sonny”
Identity & displacement Belonging Map “Effia,” “Willie,” “Marjorie”
Power systems Agency Spectrum “Quey,”  “James”

Below, you can find some instructions for using these different concept maps:

Map Type Core Question(s) How to Create Annotations Analytical Payoff Best Used When Other
Agency Spectrum Map

Focus: Power, choice, and limitation across different spaces

 Where does the character have agency? Where is that agency limited or illusory?
  1. Draw a horizontal line across your page.
  2. Label the left end: Little or No Agency.
  3. Label the right end: High Agency / Control.
  4. Identify 3″“5 key locations from the chapter.
  5. Place each location along the line based on how much control the character has in that space.
  • What choices are available to the character here
  • What choices are denied
  • One brief textual detail that supports your placement
 This map shows that agency is uneven and often depends on setting, not personality.
  • Characters move between spaces
  • Power feels partial or unstable
  • The setting offers freedom that may not be real
Pressure Map (Setting as Force)

Focus: How the environment exerts control over the character

 What pressures does the setting apply, and how do they shape the character’s behavior or survival?
  1. Write the character’s name in the center of the page.
  2. Draw arrows pointing toward the character.
  3. Each arrow represents a pressure created by the setting.

Write 2″“3 outcomes such as:

  • Loss of agency
  • Adaptation or withdrawal
  • Survival strategies
  • Identity erosion or fragmentation
  • One specific setting detail
  • A brief note explaining its effect on the character
 This map treats setting as an active force, not background.
  • Characters are confined or controlled
  • Institutions dominate the chapter
  • Action is limited by environment
 Types of pressure to consider:

  • Physical (space, labor, confinement, violence)
  • Social (laws, customs, hierarchy)
  • Psychological (fear, silence, isolation)
  • Temporal (waiting, repetition, loss of future)
Moral Geography Map

Focus: Ethics, compromise, and survival shaped by place

 What actions become normal or necessary in this setting, and why?
  1. Divide your page into two columns:
    1. Setting Conditions
    2. Moral Consequences
  2. List 3″“5 features of the setting (rules, expectations, dangers).
  3. For each feature, explain what it requires, rewards, or punishes.

Optional Visual Layer: Use symbols or colors to mark:

  • Survival choices
  • Complicity
  • Resistance
 Take notes on:

  • What behaviors does the setting make necessary for survival
  • What moral compromises does it encourage or demand
  • What actions would be unthinkable in a different place?
 This map shows that ethics are shaped by environment, not just individual values.
  • Characters face moral compromise
  • Systems normalize harm
  • Survival conflicts with personal values
Before / Inside / After Map

Focus: Transformation caused by entering a setting

 How does entering this setting change the character? Divide your page into three sections:

  1. BEFORE the Setting; Identify:
    1. The character’s beliefs or expectations
    2. Hopes, goals, or sense of identity
  2. INSIDE the Setting; Analyze:
    1. Key features of the environment
    2. Rules for survival or belonging
    3. Dominant emotions or pressures
  3. AFTER the Setting; Explain:
    1. What has changed in the character
    2. What is lost, gained, or hardened
    3. How the character now sees the world
 Include at least one specific textual detail in each section. (Annotate during the activity.) This map highlights setting as a catalyst for change, not just a location.
  • Characters move into a new environment
  • A chapter centers on transition or realization
  • Change is psychological or moral

A good way to differentiate for stronger students might be to have them choose the map for each chapter. You might give them instructions for how to choose that look something like this:

  • Is this chapter about power? →Agency Spectrum
  • Is it about constraint or survival? → Pressure Map
  • Is it about ethical compromise? → Moral Geography
  • Is it about change over time? → Before / Inside / After
  • Is it about belonging or not belonging? → Belonging Map

Setting is never neutral. These maps help students explain what the setting does and why it matters, and should help strengthen students’ setting analysis skills. I’ll let you know how it goes!

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Teaching Literature, Teaching Writing

Free Zuihitsu Poetry Lesson

Zuihitsu is a Japanese poetry form that translates roughly to “running brush.” The idea behind a zuihitsu is to follow your “brush,” or pen, and see where it takes you. Zuihitsu can include short or long lines (think Walt Whitman). They may include snippets of dialog or stories. They rely on juxtaposition, fragments, and even contradictions. As Kimiko Hahn, a practitioner of zuihitsu, says, they rely on disorder.

This video might help you understand more:

Before writing zuihitsu, I like to share two examples with students. The first is Kimiko Hahn’s poem “The Orient.”  This poem is also published in Hahn’s collection, The Narrow Road to the Interior. It’s well worth your time!

To start the lesson, I ask students to identify all the associations they have with the word “orient.” Kimiko Hahn will be using all of them in her poem, so it’s useful to get them thinking about the meanings of the word. We read Hahn’s poem and discuss our observations.

Next, I introduce zuihitsu as a “running brush” and share Jenny Xie’s “Zuihitsu.”

Only after we have seen these two zuihitsu do I define zuihitsu for students:

  • A genre of Japanese literature consisting of loosely connected personal essays and fragmented ideas that typically respond to the author’s surroundings.
  • Zuihitsu are neither prose poems nor essays, but they may resemble both in some ways.
  • The creation of order in zuihitsu depends on disorder. Zuihitsu demands, as its starting point, juxtapositions, fragments, contradictions, random materials, and pieces of varying lengths.

After this brief introduction, students write zuihitsu. I start by giving students about 10 minutes to freewrite about something they’ve been thinking about for a while.

Next, they spend about the same amount of time, more or less, writing about something that is related to that first topic.

After freewriting, it’s time to locate a few fragments to include. I encourage students to look up definitions, skim Wikipedia, find ads, and peruse song lyrics—whatever kind of fragments come to mind.

After these three steps, I ask students to move the three parts into a poem using Hahn’s and Xie’s poems as a model.

I taught this lesson most recently on our school’s annual Wellness Day because it can be quite a relaxing or cathartic exercise.

I asked one of the students who attended my session as she was leaving how she felt. She said, “I feel… light.”

We can all use a bit of that right now.

A slide deck for this lesson is embedded below.

Issues, Teaching Literature

We Need to Talk About Representation

Stack of books on a white table with a white background

I’ve been lurking on a couple of AP Lit* groups on Facebook. I see lots of great ideas, but I have questions about the texts I most often see discussed. I sense that many teachers are limited by what is available in the bookroom, and I completely understand that many teachers are living in places where they cannot teach certain texts. I am speaking from a place of privilege in that regard, and I want to acknowledge it. My school is well-resourced, and I can teach the texts I want to teach.

I was texting my sister today, and I mentioned that even though I’m getting over the flu and stayed home today, I want to be sure I can go in tomorrow because I’m starting Homegoing.  I love the first day of a new unit, and this first day is especially important because there is some unfamiliar background, and I want to set the scene for students. My sister used to live in Texas. She and her family moved to upstate New York because of Texas’s oppression against the LGBTQIA+ community, particularly transgender teens and their parents. She remarked that she wondered if I could even teach that book in Texas. I don’t know. Probably not, depending on where and what kind of school. I often tell my students that we wouldn’t be able to study some of the texts we read in some parts of the country.

Even with that caveat, there are many books by authors of color that have entered the canon (if you feel you must adhere to a “canon”), and the College Board encourages racial and gender diversity in AP Lit booklists. I wonder whether Gina Korteum has zeroed in on the problem when she writes, “many teachers (myself included) have not been concerned enough over their representation in the literary canon or the AP Lit curriculum in general.” In the post, she shares an extensive list of authors and works . (Thank you, Gina, that was a lot of work!)

Honestly, the apparent predominance of White authors in AP Lit is not something I really blame the College Board for (at least not anymore). The works on the test are certainly more diverse in the last few years than they previously had been. And Gina’s post is now over four years old, so I feel like there is enough time for the word to be out.

Students see what we’re doing.

As English teachers, we should audit our curriculum frequently, identifying gaps of all kinds, whether in the kinds of writing assignments and other assessments we assign, or the texts we teach.  It’s important work, and it will only be more important as the next four years unfold.

*AP® is a trademark registered by the College Board, which is not affiliated with, and does not endorse, this website.

Teaching Literature

Nikki Giovanni Lesson Plan

Black and white image of Nikki Giovanni. She is holding her glasses in her right hand and is resting her chin in the palm of that hand.I was so sad to hear about Nikki Giovanni’s passing. I met her a couple of times. Once was at the Georgia Council of Teachers of English convention,  probably in the late 1990s, and I met her again at NCTE some years ago (picture below). Both times I met her, she was extremely kind.

Nikki Giovanni was one of the first poets I read and thought, “Oh! You can do that with poetry? Why didn’t I read poetry like that in school?” When I was an undergraduate, I took a poetry course with Coleman Barks. Actually, it was his very last poetry class before he retired. I loved Dr. Barks, but we did not read any women in that class except for Adrienne Rich. When a classmate called him on it, I remember her advocating for Nikki Giovanni.

I heard her read “Ego-Tripping,” and you cannot beat her cadence at the poem’s end:

Many of my teacher friends on Bluesky (we’ve ditched the website formerly known as Twitter) mourned Giovanni’s passing in the way teachers do””sharing her work and wisdom and creating lessons. I had to sit in thought for a few days. I had to shed a few tears. Now, I’m ready to share my contribution in memory of Nikki Giovanni. This lesson focuses on “Resignation,” but you could probably adapt it for other Giovanni poems.

For context, I have 70-minute class periods, but you can adapt this lesson as you see fit. Some inspiration for this lesson came from Teach This Poem by the Academy of American Poets.  I also adapted the Tone Bottles activity from #TeachLivingPoets (also described in this book). I plan to teach this lesson next Thursday, right before we go on winter break. It is part of a larger thematic unit on love and relationships. For this activity, you will need:

  • Clear glue (not dries clear but actually clear, such as this kind)
  • Index cards
  • A selection of glitters and sequins
  • Clean, clear plastic bottles (such as soda or water bottles)

As a warm-up or activator, ask students to journal for a few minutes on the following topic:

What does the word “resignation” mean to you? Feel free to do some research. What connotations does the word have? 

Discuss the journal afterward. Invite students to share their ideas. Compile their definitions on the board.

I always share some details about the author’s biography. Here is what I plan to share about Giovanni.

An image of a slide deck. The image includes a picture of Nikki Giovanni and the following text: Nikki Giovanni (1943-2024); Born in Knoxville, TN, on June 7, 1943; raised in Cincinnati, OH and returned to Knoxville each summer to visit grandparents; Graduated with honors in history from Fisk University; Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech from 1987 until she retired in 2022 She died on December 9, 2024

Then we will watch this PBS News Hour video about Giovanni:

I will probably share my own reflections about meeting Ms. Giovanni and what she means to me.

Next we will watch and listen closely to “Love is so Simple” by the Dells, alluded to in the poem.

Students can share their observations about words and phrases that stood out to them and why.

Distribute copies of the poem and ask students to read it silently for a few minutes and then share out what they notice. If they don’t say anything about Giovanni’s use of anaphora, draw their attention to it and ask them about its effect.

Next, read the poem again aloud. Giovanni’s poetry, in particular, benefits from being read aloud.

As a full class, discuss the following questions:

  • Discuss the idea of “resignation” in love. Does it imply acceptance, inevitability, or submission?
  • Is this a positive or negative perspective on love? Why? (point to evidence)
  • Does “resignation” always mean giving up? Can it be empowering? (encourage students to explain their responses)

In small groups, students decide which line they think is the most important line in the poem. Bring the class together to share their lines and offer their evidence. What does this line reveal about the speaker and/or the beloved? This activity encourages them to pay attention to language.

Brainstorm a list of symbols in the poem (e.g., snowflakes, darkness and light, or metaphors of coffee and chocolate milk) and discuss what they might represent. 

Have students create “Resignation” bottles that capture the poem the way they see it. They should pick elements such as glitter, sequins, or other small items that represent a symbol in the poem, the tone of the poem, and a chosen image, phrase, or line. They should select a food color that represents the poem’s overall meaning. I won’t reprint instructions for Tone Bottles here since you can find them at #TeachLivingPoets, but I will basically be following those instructions with the tweak of incorporating symbols in addition to tone. Also, I plan to tweak the recipe to eliminate mineral oil and soap, as I found them hard to work with. Instead, I’ll be using a recipe that is more similar to this one for a glitter jar.

On index cards, students write a paragraph that addresses these two prompts:

  • Explain why the bottle represents Nikki Giovanni’s poem.
  • Explain how creating the bottle helped you analyze the poem.

Finally, let students show off their work and examine their peers’ work with a gallery walk. Ask them to reflect on their peers’ choices.

I’ll let you know how the lesson goes. In the meantime, feel free to use it.

A picture of Nikki Giovanni with the blog author, Dana Huff

Reflection, Teaching and Learning, Teaching Literature, Technology

My Experiment with ChatGPT

A Laptop Displaying ChatGPT
Photo by Emiliano Vittoriosi on Unsplash

One of the things I dislike about teaching AP English Literature is that I really need to offer students opportunities to practice for the exam, which means timed writing and multiple choice practice. I don’t think timed writing is pedagogically sound because we are not replicating the kind of writing students will have to do most often in college and career. Sure, students have deadlines, but it will be uncommon for them to have to produce something like a timed essay in the real world. I also tend to ask more open-ended questions rather than multiple-choice questions. I have moved away from giving tests and even quizzes as learning assessments.  But I also don’t want to shortchange my students who plan to take the exam.

I don’t like giving students prompts that are disconnected from our studies. If, for example, we are engaged in a unit on Home and Family and are reading Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, I would prefer to have students practice timed writing or multiple choice connected to that text or at least to the themes we are exploring in the unit. Unfortunately, the College Board seems to think the best way to organize the class is by genre rather than by theme. Finding timed writing prompts is not too hard, but finding multiple-choice practice based on the texts I teach can be a challenge.

This week, I decided to try ChatGPT to write some multiple-choice questions just to see what would happen. This is the prompt I put into ChatGPT:

Create five multiple choice questions with options A through E about Layli Long Soldier’s poem “Whereas”

Here is a link to the poem. I really didn’t think it would generate much of anything because Layli Long Soldier’s work is not as well known as, say, Robert Frost’s or Emily Dickinson’s. However, in about 15 seconds, ChatGPT generated the following questions:

  1. In Layli Long Soldier’s poem “Whereas,” what is the significance of the title?
    A. It refers to a particular location where an event takes place.
    B. It’s a reference to a legal term used in U.S. government documents.
    C. It’s a metaphor for a state of mind or emotion.
    D. It’s a nod to the Native American oral storytelling tradition.
    E. It’s a reference to a specific historical document.
  2. What is the central theme of Layli Long Soldier’s poem “Whereas”?
    A. The importance of personal identity in the face of cultural erasure.
    B. The complexity and contradictions of language and communication.
    C. The impact of historical trauma on present-day Indigenous people.
    D. The beauty and power of nature as a source of healing and renewal.
    E. The struggle for justice and equality in contemporary America
  3. Which of the following literary devices does Layli Long Soldier use in “Whereas” to convey her message?
    A. Imagery and metaphor
    B. Rhyme and alliteration
    C. Foreshadowing and irony
    D. Flashback and symbolism
    E. Simile and hyperbole
  4. How does Layli Long Soldier use repetition in “Whereas”?
    A. To emphasize the importance of certain ideas or concepts.
    B. To create a sense of rhythm and musicality in the poem.
    C. To convey the speaker’s frustration and anger.
    D. To establish a connection with the reader.
    E. To evoke a particular mood or emotion.
  5. Which of the following best describes the tone of Layli Long Soldier’s “Whereas”?
    A. Angry and accusatory
    B. Reflective and contemplative
    C. Humorous and satirical
    D. Hopeful and optimistic
    E. Sarcastic and ironic

Now, the first question is tricky, but it’s the kind of question with a good distractor. Two answers are pretty good, but one is best. The other four are a bit more straightforward. I think they’re pretty good questions. If I had tried to write them, it would have taken over an hour, I’m sure. I am quite sure I wouldn’t have been able to find questions like this online or in any AP prep books.

I told my students where they came from, and one student who had missed a couple commented, “THAT’S why they suck.” Kidding aside, the students generally agreed they were AP-style questions. They also reflected that when I had asked them to write multiple choice questions as a thinking activity in class, it had taken them a good chunk of our 70-minute period to write just one good question.

I tried again with Layli Long Soldier’s poem “Obligations 2,” and ChatGPT didn’t do as well. I believe the AI confused the poem with another text based on the questions it generated, but I’m not sure which one. Still, I think this is a game-changer for including more quick multiple-choice practice questions on the texts I actually teach.

I decided to try again to see what would happen if I asked ChatGPT to create some discussion questions. Here is the prompt I used:

make up discussion questions based on Zitkála-Šá’s poem “The Red Man’s America”

It generated the following:

  1. What message is Zitkála-Šá conveying in “The Red Man’s America,” and how does she use language and imagery to convey that message?
  2. How does Zitkála-Šá’s personal experience as a Native American influence her perspective on the United States and its treatment of indigenous peoples?
  3. In what ways does “The Red Man’s America” challenge traditional American narratives of manifest destiny and the conquest of the West?
  4. How does Zitkála-Šá’s poem reflect the broader struggle of Native Americans to maintain their cultural identity and resist assimilation into mainstream American society?
  5. What role does nature play in “The Red Man’s America,” and how does Zitkála-Šá use descriptions of the natural world to convey her ideas about the relationship between Native Americans and the land?
  6. How does “The Red Man’s America” compare to other works of Native American literature in terms of its themes and style?
  7. In what ways does Zitkála-Šá’s poem challenge stereotypes and misconceptions about Native Americans that are still prevalent in American culture today?
  8. How does Zitkála-Šá’s poem speak to contemporary debates about issues such as land rights, cultural appropriation, and representation of indigenous peoples in popular culture?
  9. What does Zitkála-Šá’s poem suggest about the potential for Native American cultures to survive and thrive in the face of colonization and assimilation?
  10. How does “The Red Man’s America” speak to broader themes of identity, belonging, and resistance in American literature and culture?

I don’t love all of these questions, but I admit most of them are pretty good, and I would use them in a class discussion. I really thought, again, that I might stump the AI with a lesser-known writer, but I didn’t.

Next, I asked ChatGPT to write me a lesson plan based on three Emily Dickinson poems I want to teach. The lesson plan was okay. It wasn’t great, but it was not terrible, either. I decided I wouldn’t use any of it because I had some other ideas about how I wanted to approach teaching Dickinson’s poems.

I think ChatGPT has the potential to save some time for tasks, but it’s not yet as creative as a human. Still, given how much time teachers spend doing some of these tasks, I think it could be a very interesting tool.