@Students, what are you reading in school right now?
This is what I’m reading with my groups.
7th grade: The Lost World
8th grade: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
9th grade: Black Beauty
I’m tutoring one of my neighbors, who’s in 9th grade at a different school, and in his class they’re reading Romeo and Juliet. Now, I read that when I was in 9th grade, and I’ve never been a big fan of R&J. But what makes it worse is the extensive analysis worksheets they give him for homework.
Haha. I am sorry for your misery and understand how you are feeling. Same, I also never liked reading Romeo and Juliet and gave it up midway.
To be honest, I have never found Shakespearean literature that great. Be it Julius Caesar or Macbeth or… The Tempest. The last one is my absolute hated one. It makes no sense at all! The girl leaves with her lover to escape with her father only to die in the storm. And the whole play is so enormously dragged out that I feel headaches whenever I had to read it for school. Like, why would you make such a long, dragged out story only for them to die?
I am currently reading The Green Mile by Stephen King. I definitely recommend it. First I watched the movie and it was swell so I decided to check out the book as well, haha.
I’m not that into Shakespeare myself, either. Besides, I think that English class assignments should be more practical. I’m a middle school English teacher, and even though the syllabus and books are chosen by the head of the English department, the school gives us enough freedom where we can customize the assignments we give our students.
If I had to teach my neighbor’s class and R&J was on the curriculum, I think that instead of having the kids analyze the play and how Romeo or Juliet felt, it would be much better to have critical thinking questions that relate more to the students’ lives and context.
I’m currently reading A long walk to water and an article called lost boys lost girl (History) … it’s so boring. The amount of homework they give us makes me want to faint and I have never really been a fan of History.
Lol I love my literature class. We read stuff from like the 1800’s (more like late 1800’s tho) and the 1900’s. We’ve read Lovecraft and Oscar Wild. It’s great. It’s all from authors who did stuff a bit out there for their time. Like being gay. It’s like, when you read it it has gay stuff in it and it’s very easy to tell, but when the writers write it they have to appeal to the people of that time and the beliefs of that time. So there’s this contrast of appealing to the beliefs of that time, and also opposing them. It’s wildly fascinating.
Right now, we’re doing independent reading for this quarter. So, I decided to reread Black Boy by Richard Wright. It’s been a very interesting read so far, and I’m picking up a lot of things that my younger self didn’t notice when I first read it.