A funny thing happened on the way to Q4. Our private school junior English teacher and department chair resigned, effective the end of February.
Burnout + Having a friend who needed help in his business RIGHT NOW = Early Exit.
We miss him. A lot. In many ways, he was the heart of the department. He has a poet’s soul and a young family, and, honestly, education in our current moment isn’t a great profession for poetic souls.
So I’m stepping in to teach a few English classes through the end of the year, added to my part-time journalism and communications job. Everything aligned—open position, hubs getting caught in a corporate RIF, sense that the Lord was leading me back into the classroom—to lead me back to full-time.
For two Q3 weeks + all of Q4, I’m teaching English again, and OF COURSE, I’m teaching content I’ve never taught before: Frankenstein and Gatsby. I really am excited to return to the English classroom for a little while. It’s just that… it’s Gatsby. Ew. Across my whole decades-long teaching career in education, I’ve successfully evaded Gatsby, the most overrated American novel in this history of ever. Hot take, I know. Everyone else LOVES teaching it. But *insert eyeroll* it’s just SO on-the-nose I can’t.
Anyway, for lack of love toward this work, I have to find something to be enthusiastic about, and since it’s laden with stereotypical characters, contrived settings, forced symbolism, and depressing themes, I’m reaching into the depths of my undying love for teaching high school students how to annotate literature. Yay, Mortimer Adler!
As I make content, I’ll share it here, so check back now and then. Or follow. That works too.
This post’s free resources are a slide/guide and a 17 x 11 printable poster of the system we’re using to close-read The Great Gatsby. I promised the kiddos that annotating would pay, so we’re having in-class reading checks with every assignment, and I’m letting them use their annotated books during the timed quizzes.
If you decide to download and use the resource, let me know how it goes. I’ll just be hanging out at the end of my dock, staring at green light across the water, Old Sport.
Always Learning HQ 