Books (Some Banned) That I Have Taught

When I went to junior high and high school, back in the Dark Ages (practically),  we read the worst (in my opinion) books. In junior high English we read Evangeline and Ivanhoe. Not my kind of reading. And then one third of David Copperfield. I guess we didn’t have time for the other two thirds. That was all for Dickens; we didn’t read A Tale of Two Cities. That is all I remember except for a special advanced reading group I was put in. I remember only Thorton Wilder’s Bridge of Saint Luis Rey from that extra class. Those books were more modern and more enjoyable.

High school wasn’t much of an improvement. I remembering reading Moby Dick, which I did not enjoy. And since The Scarlet Letter was banned in my high school, we read The House of the Seven Gables instead. I know I read more books than that in high school English but I don’t remember them. Ullyses? Silar Marner? Who knows?

I taught junior high school, but I student taught in 10th and 12th grades of high school. In the particular 10th grade class I taught in, the teacher read to the students as they sat and ate their lunches, spread out all over their desks. It was the period before lunch.She was reading them the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series.I read one or two books of the series later on. I think I might like to read the whole thing. I observed a ninth or tenth grage ESL class, and they were reading Of Mice and Men. I also student taught a senior class for the last semester. I was surprised and delighted at the book the teacher had selected: A Clockwork Orange. Of course that was a movie I could not show much of to the class.

I ended up teaching 7th grade.There was no strict curriculum as to what books we were to read, although most of the 7th grade English teachers read roughly the same books. I assumed that whatever was available in the book room was okay. I ended up with some advanced classes, and I pushed all my classes and we covered a lot, To tell you the truth, literature was my least favorite thing to teach. I obviously focused on grammar and vocabulary.

What was available in the book room were good books, but still the old dystopic books that had already been used by 15 or so years. But the books were for the most part enjoyable. I think I started with The Outsiders, which the students really enjoyed. Then I did what no other 7th grade teacher did: I read Skakespeare’s Julius Caesar. It was a shortnened version with the original language. We used to act it out, complete with plastic swords and armor. The students enjoyed that. I also assigned two or three independent reading projects where the students could read whatever they wanted . Sometimes I would give guidelines, such as it had to be a biography. But I never cared if the book was banned!!!! I closed the year with the creme de la creme: I gave the students a choice. I had Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, and The Giver. All great books. For the advanced classes, I gave another choice: 1984. They did this reading in groups depending on  which book they choose. Many of them chose 1984 which I told them would be the most challenging.

Well, of course, in came the large, tall parent who was a pastor, complaining about 1984. I had a tall, large teacher with me to defend me. I had already been through a traumatic parent interaction once before.

This pastor had never read the book except he knew there was a short passage about a prostitute that I don’t think many of the students paid much attention to. These were pretty saavy students. And they understood the book, and they really liked it. So I had to rearrange the whole class and make an excuse so this boy wouldn’t be embarrassed. He missed a good book.

Some other books used in the junior high were Holes for 7th grade, which I didn’t use,  and The Thngs They Carried, used in 8th grade. 

I wonder if the books have been updated since I left in 2015!