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"Please stop teaching students to identify literary elements." That's how I started my most "viral" blog post of all ti...
03/07/2026

"Please stop teaching students to identify literary elements."

That's how I started my most "viral" blog post of all time. (It was probably read by a few hundred people, but oh boy were those some people who were angry about my opinions on figurative language.)

My main point was that the real lesson you should be teaching students is how to actually understand how figurative language or other literary elements function to create meaning in a text (not just to point out and label).

In other words, I think students should understand meaning creation, not the difference between synecdoche and metonymy.

In my experience, the higher the level of thinking you require from your students, the more they’ll benefit by a breaking down of the steps to get there. Sure, every once in a while you’ll come across a kid who can just naturally and effortlessly analyze a literary text, but honestly that’s like one in a thousand.

What I have also found, however, is that the kind of analysis that is generally thought to be only accessible to the most gifted students is really possible for all kinds of students, given enough structure, support, and scaffolding.

This is the process that I follow to get students to better understand how a writer’s choices create meaning in a text.

Start with a creative writing warm-up focused on a specific literary element.
If I want students to notice the setting, then I have them complete my mystery setting description exercise. If I want them to focus on figurative language, then I have them write five metaphors or similes of their own. It doesn’t really matter how good their writing is—getting them to focus on a specific literary element from the inside out is a great way to get them thinking about how writers use devices to create meaning and effect in literature.

Choose an especially rich passage or excerpt from a text.
This isn’t something that needs a ton of thought. Generally, it’s a passage that has a lot going on, both in terms of the plot and the literary elements. Scenes when the reader is introduced to a character or when a character realizes something or changes or has a resolution of some sort are all good choices here. Students too can generally choose the most important passage from a longer text without much stress.

Give students a physical copy of the passage that they can mark up.
There’s something about having a physical copy and really going to town that encourages students to slow down and notice. If they are choosing their own passage, have them copy it or, even better, write it out themselves.

Ask students to notice whatever they can.
They might annotate the text or just circle or underline or take notes in any way they want. The important thing is for them to see what pops out as being essential or interestingly written before they are even thinking about why these pieces are important. If it seems like a “special” part of the text for any reason, then it’s a good choice. An easy notation system that I often use is to mark important passages with a star, interesting passages with a check, and confusing or challenging passages with a question mark. In my experience, students almost always do a great job finding the most important literary elements when they just go with what jumps out at them.

Get them thinking about how those special words or phrases affect the reader.
This is not an easy step for students to complete, and it’s really not enough to just ask them to analyze the effect. Instead, they need to answer a few different questions—likely some or all of them are relevant to the passages they’ve chosen. What associations do they have with the chosen words? What images are created by the vivid descriptions? What emotions are evoked by the circled or underlined sentences? How do the author’s choices make them feel? What do they think of when they read these pieces to which their attention has been drawn? Keep asking questions until they can come up with some responses.

Come back to the main ideas of the passage.
Students are usually very practiced in this, though sometimes it takes a little pushing to get them to find the whole idea of a text. They will have a main idea when they can answer this question: What point is the author making about people or the world in general?

Bring it all together.
The emotions that they felt and those associations that were created helped them to understand the meaning of the text. In other words, the reason why the author chose such a unique word for the second line of the first stanza or such a vivid metaphor to describe the way he felt in the third line of the first stanza was to convey his idea to the reader. So maybe if the main point is that kids who are abused by their parents often make excuses for the abuser, then the paradoxical feelings of sadness and happiness created by the image of dancing in the first stanza help create that meaning. Or if the main idea is that love is sweeter and more intense when it won’t last long, then the image at the end of the poem of the warm dying fire helps the reader feel the way that the speaker does.

Get them to write down whatever they can.
Putting all this into words on the page is not an easy task, so I usually just have students do a brain dump at the end of all this work. They’ll be surprised at how much they have to say after all that work and analysis, and yet they’ll likely not get down everything in their heads. In any case, having them write it out is great practice for when they will have to do more formal writing on literary analysis.

Expect to repeat this process often.
Like any complicated skill, learning how to read and analyze a text is not something that can be taught in one go. Plan to repeat and practice many times. And encourage students to repeat this same process any time they have to do any kind of writing on a literary text.

This won't teach them to tell personification from anthropomorphism, but it will teach them to analyze a text!

Whether they are working though these steps in order to write an essay on a state assessment test or in order to improve their skills in analysis and critical thinking or to prepare for the AP Literature test, I have found this process to be quiet effective.

Of course, like anything else, students need lots of practice in order to gain the skills as well as the confidence they’ll need to complete this kind of work.

This tale of an imprisoned housewife who slowly goes insane as she becomes more and more obsessed with the wallpaper in ...
03/05/2026

This tale of an imprisoned housewife who slowly goes insane as she becomes more and more obsessed with the wallpaper in her summer rental is confusing, seemingly random, and on the surface, plotless.

As one contemporary of Gilman said, it’s “enough to drive anyone mad to read it.”

Add to that the extensive historical and literary context that’s pretty important for students to have when reading the story—from Weir Mitchell’s “rest cure” to the Victorian ideal of the angel in the house to classic gothic literature tropes like the double, the secret document, or the imprisoned woman—and this story can feel like too much to even attempt. In fact, while I have adored and respected this story since I first read it in college, I avoided writing the unit for it that I knew it deserved—because I knew just how much work it would entail!

But I’ve done it! I’ve peeled off the, er, layers of the story and broken it down to createa unit that makes the story accessible, relevant, and still challenging for high school students.

Here are my 7 tips for teaching the frustrating 19th-century masterpiece about a woman and her wallpaper:

Get students thinking about the importance of setting before you start reading.
If your students are anything like mine, as soon as they get to a detailed setting description they immediately think “skip!” But for a story in which the setting is practically a main character, they really can’t ignore it in this text. My favorite way to prime the setting pump is to play the “Mystery Setting” game. In this creative writing exercise, students each describe a setting where something has happened without saying what took place. Then, they read their descriptions out loud and get their peers to guess. This is a super fun game and a great way to get students thinking about how much a detailed setting description can convey—but a warning that you will get your share of crime stories!

Introduce classes to the Victorian ideal of the Angel in the House.
Gilman was definitely battling some deeply entrenched expectations in her life and work, and so getting students to understand just how unrealistic and oppressive Victorian standards for women were is key before you start reading the story. I like to do this by discussing art work from the time as well as excerpts from the poem “The Angel in the House” by Coventry Patmore.

Start with a close reading of the first passage.
When students are just thrown into the mix with a narrator who is writing a diary with zero explanation, they can get lost on what’s happening and why it matters. So before having them delve into this story of insanity, I have them look carefully at all of the clues that the first passage gives about the characters, setting, plot, and themes of the story as a whole. Carefully crafted analysis questions on “The Yellow Wallpaper” help students notice those clues instead of skimming past them. Knowing that the main conflict is between the narrator and her husband, for example, gets them thinking about who “wins” that battle and how they know. After they’ve got their footing a little, we move on to the rest of the story.

Get students writing about the text early and often.
Since this story can be tricky to wrap your head around, I like to offer students theme-centered quotes to respond to. Giving them handouts with quotes about the narrator’s mental state, for example, helps them to both close read and unpack the language of the text as well as to see how the narrator changes through the story. This way, they can focus on meaning rather than searching for the right quotes to analyze. Strong discussion questions can then build on that writing and push students to debate interpretation rather than summarize plot.

Read excerpts from The Rest Cure and “Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper,” and read them as primary texts.
While it may seem easier and faster to give students a quick powerpoint about Victorian expectations for women and Weir Mitchell’s ideas about women’s health, when students get to tackle those pieces as texts to be analyzed, they’ll see how Mitchell’s language of control, obedience, and mistrust echoes the narrator’s portrayal of her seemingly-over-the-top husband. And they’ll see how Gilman’s short essay both subtly and masterfully frames her story in the way she wanted it to be received. They’ll also see the story’s power as a work of protest and resistance, and maybe gain more of an appreciation for Gilman’s choices.

Read the story in the context of the Gothic Literature tradition.
While Gilman’s narrator doesn’t explore damp passageways in old manors, she is staying in an “ancestral hall” for the summer—and she is clearly a fan of the gothic literature genre. Gilman takes standard tropes of the genre and turns them on their head to show the very real terrors for her and her contemporaries. And when students understand that, they will gain an appreciation for the story, the tradition, and the very real struggles of women in Gilman’s time. This is a great time for a jigsaw-type activity in which small groups are responsible for the various tropes.

End with a meaningful assessment.
Sure, making class art out of collages of yellow wallpaper and quotes from the story sounds like it’ll be fun and low-key, but students will likely see that kind of activity for the busywork it is. A simple plot-based quiz might check comprehension, but it won’t capture the depth of Gilman’s craft. Instead, I like to have students write an “ironic how-to” in the voice of the narrator, John, Weir Mitchell, or Charlotte Perkins Gilman herself. Topics might include something like “How to Control a Willful, Spoiled Patient” by Weir Mitchell or “How to Deal with Your Silly Goose of a Wife” by John or “How to Write a Story That Protests Unjust Treatment of Women” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. This is the kind of writing assignment that really teaches itself as students revise and edit their work in order to write the funniest essay and get a laugh out of their peers. Adding some concrete elements like quotes from the text to back up their ideas and some vocab words from the source text really make this fun assignment quite rigorous.

It’s a lot, but I think this story deserves to be taught well! Want it all done for you? The approach in this complete unit on “The Yellow Wallpaper” will get students appreciating, understanding, and maybe even enjoying a story about a woman and her yellow wallpaper.

If the most important thing your students learn about Gatsby is the symbolism of the green light… something went wrong.J...
03/05/2026

If the most important thing your students learn about Gatsby is the symbolism of the green light… something went wrong.

Just because every American Literature class in the country will read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel on the American Dream, that doesn’t mean that your lesson plans on Gatsby should be like all the others.

It’s one thing to fulfill a requirement or simply “cover” the book and it’s quite another to teach an impactful unit on The Great Gatsby that will really make a difference in the way your students view their world.

II first started teaching this novel in my American Literature classes back in the early 2000s, and it was always one of my favorite units of the year.

Here are my top seven tips for teaching a unit on Gatsby that will stick with your students for years.

Get your students excited to start the novel.
Nothing makes a novel unit go smoothly quite like students who are eager to read the book. So it’s worth it to take a day or two to get your classes anticipating the book and its themes. My favorite way to get my students excited to read Gatsby is by getting them thinking about the bigger ideas in a fun, laid-back way. We play a game, do some writing, and watch and discuss a compelling TED Talk about how money makes people mean—and all of a sudden they are already considering the themes of the novel.

Make sure students actually read the book.
If your classes simply listen to your interpretations of the novel without reading it themselves, all the planning in the world won’t help them remember your unit. The best ways that I have found to guarantee that my classes interact with the words on the page is to give daily reading quizzes on the homework with questions that I’ve checked against the most popular online summaries. It might take a little extra work at first, but once students get into the story and realize how much they enjoy actually reading the book, they are usually happy to keep reading for themselves. And then to make sure they’re really grappling with the text and not just skimming for plot, I use close reading questions for each chapter that help students notice important details in Fitzgerald’s language, themes, and structure.

Enjoy the suspenseful plot together.
One of the main reasons why Fitzgerald’s work endures is because The Great Gatsby is such a compelling story. Just enjoying the mystery with your students as they read it for the first time will go a long way towards helping them remember the book. So play up the questions and drama surrounding Gatsby and his past—students will get more out of the experience when they have fun reading.

Get students writing about the text early and often.
I suggest starting each day with a bellringer freewrite prompt. These short writing exercises prime students to think about the essential questions of the novel before they even open the book. For example, before I ask them to consider how World War I might have affected Nick, I’ll have them write on a question like “How do you think war affects people? How might someone change as a result of fighting in a war?” I also have students write reading responses based on the text as well as short essays in quizzes and tests. The more students write about this classic text, the more they refine their own views on important questions, and the more memorable and personal their experience with the novel will be.

Help your classes to experience the historical context.
Getting students to appreciate the historical context of a book doesn't mean lecturing them on dates and important figures or making them sit through videos about stocks and bonds. Instead, get your classes to experience the music, art, and film from the period first hand. Even after the facts of the story have faded from their memory, they’ll still recall the time they listened to an old version of “The Sheik of Araby” in class or that two-minute video on cars in the 20s or the compelling video they watched about real-life gangster Arnold Rothstein.

Add diverse voices to the discussion.
Gatsby is one of my all-time favorite novels, and yet its author was definitely biased on many issues of class, race, and gender. And so it is essential to include more marginalized views and voices in your unit. I have found great success in including the film “Hoop Dreams” in my American Dream unit. Similarly, poems such as “Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes, “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, or “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar help students to come at the essential questions of the novel from multiple viewpoints.

Help your students discover why this classic novel is relevant to their lives today.
Once your classes start thinking about some of the essential questions that Fitzgerald asks in his novel, they’ll realize how much they have in common with the characters in the story. Getting your students to discuss and write about why we lie to ourselves and others, what role deception plays in romantic relationships, or why it is important to have dreams, will help create a truly memorable Gatsby unit. After the party scene in Chapter 2, for example, I ask students, “Why does Nick feel like both an insider and an outsider at the party?” At first students think it’s a basic question, but the conversation quickly deepens. This is one of the first moments when students begin to see how Nick’s personality, his position between social classes, and even his sexuality shape the way he observes the world around him. When you incorporate TED Talks, compelling radio reporting, and other contemporary resources in your lesson plans, students will see how we are all still struggling to find answers to these essential questions.

After years of teaching the novel and really getting to know it from the inside, I finally had the time—once I was out of the classroom—to turn those ideas into the complete unit it always deserved--with daily writing prompts, chapter discussion questions, close reading activities, and a pacing guide that makes the entire novel easy to plan and teach.

And when you’ve taught a Gatsby unit that has students pondering its big questions years later—or even remembering how excited they were to discover Gatsby’s secrets—you’ll know you’ve done this classic novel justice.

These are my do’s and don’ts of teaching Shakespeare. 1. Don’t start with a Powerpoint about Shakespeare’s life and time...
02/25/2026

These are my do’s and don’ts of teaching Shakespeare.

1. Don’t start with a Powerpoint about Shakespeare’s life and times.

This is the kind of superficial knowledge that might sound good if a student is at a cocktail party some day, but it is not going to help them actually understand or appreciate a play. Having them sit passively and listen to information is also a great way to get students to turn off and tune out.

Instead, have students think about the issues from the inside out.

I like to start every Shakespeare play with fictional prompts. I write down five to ten scenarios that will actually happen in the play. (So, for example, when we read Romeo and Juliet I might write something like “A girl meets a boy she likes—and her parents say that she can never see him again” or “A man’s best friend is killed and he vows to get revenge.”) Then, students choose one to write from the point of view of any one character. When we get to that part of the play, it’s as if they are reunited with an old friend—they remember and understand what’s going on. As a result of starting each play this way, students realize that the issues and problems of the people living in Shakespeare’s plays are not that different from what they might face in their own lives.

2. Don’t assume that the movie version that looks most authentic is the best.

In my teaching of Romeo and Juliet, I came across the 1968 version of the play. Yes, the hair and costumes are lovely, but the Franco Zeffirelli version also portrays Romeo and Juliet as romantic and beautifully tragic. Not really the message about su***de that I want to portray to my vulnerable teenage students. Similarly, the Mel Gibson version of Hamlet also has some great period-perfect looks, but I want to stay away from a version in which every female character is evil or weak.

Instead, give some of the more modern-looking adaptations a chance.

I truly love the Baz Luhrmann version of Romeo and Juliet from 1996 (aka the Leo version). Yes, he takes more liberties with the plot, but he also creates a more comprehensive and thoughtful portrayal of the way that two teenagers rush into things and make lots of stupid mistakes that could be avoided. Kenneth Branagh’s version of Hamlet, while not visually perfect to the time period, is a much more rich portrayal of the play. I particularly like Kate Winslet’s Ophelia, who is not a weak girl by any stretch of the imagination.

3. Don’t explain what the play means.

If at any time you find yourself lecturing to your classes about symbols, metaphors, or any other English-y thing, stop immediately. As Benjamin Franklin wisely said, the best way to make sure someone forgets something is to tell them about it.

Instead, let them figure it out on their own.

I realized long ago the value of having students read and work through the text themselves—even a text as challenging as a Shakespeare play. I give them specific questions, and when needed, point to the specific lines where they can find what they need. But then I let them figure it out for themselves. My goals aren’t that they memorize my ideas about the play, but rather that they gain the skills and confidence to read and understand the play without me.

4. Don’t have students read the play out loud.

I know that this is not a view shared by many teachers—and if you can pull off a student reading of the play, more power to you. But in my experience, a great way to kill the drama is to spend hours listening to teenagers drone through the reading when they don’t yet have any idea what they are saying

Instead, let them read along to professional actors.

I am a huge fan of the Arkangel recordings—they even have sound effects! I have found that when students listen to actors who actually understand what they are saying, they get a lot more out of the reading and actually have a pretty easy time comprehending. They know when something is sad or funny or shocking—just from the tone of the actors’ voices. And learning to comprehend meaning through intonation is an important skill as well.

5. Don’t cover the play with discussion only. This is another mistake that I made for a long time. I love discussion—so that must mean that everyone else does, right? But this method of teaching leaves out a number of students who don’t learn this way.

Instead, give less extroverted students a chance to write about their ideas. I make a point to integrate freewrites or reading responses into every class plan. This is a great way to let students who don’t process out loud figure out what they think about an idea.

6. Don’t end with a boring essay on a yes or no question.

If you have done all the work that it takes to get students to appreciate, understand, and enjoy a great work of art, the last thing you want to do is kill that experience with a boring essay that tasks them with going through the motions of making an argument. Essays like “Does Hamlet do the right thing when he kills his uncle?” or “How important is the setting to the play?” will kill students’ excitement pretty quickly.

Instead, have students grapple with a small piece of the play in groups.

I like to have my classes end our unit on a Shakespeare play by completing a cooperative writing project in which they write a modern translation of a scene from the play, working together to translate as well as modernize the themes of the scene. It’s a great way to achieve my long-term goals for the unit: I want my students to feel confident enough to view or read a Shakespeare play on their own, without any hand holding from a teacher.

Of course, you will likely make many many mistakes as you teach a Shakespeare unit to your classes—it’s the only way that you’ll learn what works for you and your students! But taking note of what works and why will help you grow in teaching whatever you decide to tackle this year.

02/01/2026

If we stop asking students to read full books, we shouldn’t be surprised when they stop believing books matter.

01/30/2026

If we want authentic student thinking in the age of AI, we need pens, paper, and eyes on the process.

Students don’t struggle with writing because they “don’t get it.”They struggle because we keep asking them to do somethi...
01/29/2026

Students don’t struggle with writing because they “don’t get it.”

They struggle because we keep asking them to do something we’ve never actually shown them how to see.

We all agree, in theory, that examples matter. Mentor texts matter. Models matter.
But in practice? A lot of students have spent years reading only to answer questions—not to notice craft, decisions, or moves a writer makes on purpose.

So when we hand them a “great example” and say,
“Okay, what do you notice about the writing?”
…the room goes quiet. Or vague. Or defensive.

That’s not resistance. That’s inexperience.

Reading to learn how to write is a different skill entirely—and for many students, especially struggling readers and writers, it’s brand new.

What’s worked for me isn’t flashy. It’s slower. More explicit. More human.

– Frontload vocabulary so they don’t shut down at the first unfamiliar word.
– Read the text out loud or give class time to read it—because assigning a challenging mentor text for homework is usually a wish, not a plan.
– Start with meaning before craft. They can’t analyze how something works if they don’t know what it’s saying.
– When you shift to technique, point exactly where you want them to look. Quote the sentence. Name the line. Don’t make them guess what you’re hoping they’ll notice.
– If you want them to try a move, show it more than once. Definitions aren’t enough.
– Keep coming back to the mentor text in conferences and mini-lessons. Understanding doesn’t happen on a single Tuesday.
– Let them see you try the moves too—awkward drafts and all. Writing shouldn’t look like magic performed by other people.

And maybe most importantly: remember that for a lot of students, this kind of thinking is new. Hard. Uncomfortable. Worth it.

Mentor texts don’t work because students magically absorb them.

They work because we slow down enough to teach students how to read like writers—one small, specific move at a time.

And once that clicks?

Writing stops feeling like a mystery they’re failing at
and starts feeling like a craft they’re allowed to learn.

01/28/2026

AI didn’t kill writing.
It exposed how essential the process has always been.

The trick that finally worked when teaching writing felt impossible? It had nothing to do with better comments—or more o...
01/28/2026

The trick that finally worked when teaching writing felt impossible? It had nothing to do with better comments—or more of them.

Teaching writing—whether it’s narrative, research, or something as small as topic sentences—is never simple. It’s nuanced, unpredictable, and somehow always different from the last time you taught it.

For years, I tried to make the process clearer and more manageable for students. The biggest shift came when I started building teacher conferences into almost every writing assignment.

Early in my career, I stayed after school for “extra help.” No one came—until the night before the essay was due, when a line magically appeared. Then life changed. I had kids. Staying after for hours wasn’t an option anymore, but I still wanted students to get real feedback.

So I tried something that felt a little unhinged at first: meeting with every student during class.

It took a lot of trial and error, but I landed on a system that works. It’s still exhausting—but it all happens during the school day, and it’s deeply worth it.
Here’s what made conferences manageable and meaningful for me:

• I set a hard limit on time (usually one school week per assignment).
• I broke class time into short, consistent chunks—about seven minutes per student.
• I used a timer so I could be fully present and move on when time was up.
• I prioritized. Big ideas first. Organization before commas. Always.
• I never assumed mastery carried over. Writing progress isn’t linear.
• And most importantly, I focused on helping students understand what they were trying to say—not telling them what I thought they should say.

The goal was never to “fix” an essay in seven minutes. It was to figure out where a student was—and help them move one step forward.

By the end of a full day of conferences, I was completely wiped out. But I also knew my students better. I understood their thinking. And I’d actually helped them grow as writers.

Exhausting? Yes.

Sustainable? Surprisingly, also yes.

And still one of the most rewarding parts of teaching writing.

01/27/2026

Handwritten work forces students to sit with their own thoughts.
That discomfort is where learning lives.

01/27/2026

You can't trust essays that students write at home. The only way to be sure they're doing the work is to watch them write in class.

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