English teachers have an
important job. They teach students how to read and write well, how to
understand what they read, how to learn from their peers, and how to have
productive and challenging conversations. Being a successful English teacher
can be difficult, but there are steps you can take to improve, so that both you
and your students get more out of your time in the classroom.
Part 1
Developing Lesson Plans
1 - Choose material that will interest your students. While
classics like Moby Dick are incredibly important historically and have a lot of
literary value, they can be too long, boring, and seemingly irrelevant to hold
your students' interest for long. Instead, assign shorter or more contemporary
works, or works that you know your students will enjoy.
• Look for literary or academic merit in unlikely places: even a
zombie apocalypse novel like Colson Whitehead's Zone One deals with challenging
and important topics that perfectly complement a classic like Hemingway's In
Our Time while still remaining relevant to modern audiences.
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