{"id":452,"date":"2019-12-06T09:30:55","date_gmt":"2019-12-06T16:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/?p=452"},"modified":"2021-07-09T18:07:10","modified_gmt":"2021-07-10T00:07:10","slug":"teach-your-passion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/teach-your-passion\/","title":{"rendered":"Teach Your Passion"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Have you ever found yourself dreading the upcoming unit\/novel\/play? Do you put it off and hope you run out of time to teach it?\u00a0 Too often English teachers are corralled into teaching specific texts by people who don\u2019t have to teach those texts. These texts are not ones that they are passionate about. And in the end, student learning suffers. So my number one piece of advice for English teachers is to teach your passion \u2013 whether that is Shakespeare, Mythology, John Steinbeck, or anyone or anything else.<\/p>

Let me start by telling a story.<\/p>

I was a first-year teacher at a school for Youth in Custody.\u00a0 The other English teacher I worked with had been teaching for 20 years and was amazing.\u00a0 She had this energy and personality that I (as an introverted teacher) did not have.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>

Around January of my first year, I hated what I was teaching every day.\u00a0 I wanted to teach Romeo and Juliet with the students but was advised not to by the other English teacher.\u00a0 I decided to do it anyway. I knew that the students, many of whom were gang members, would easily identify with the Capulets and the Montagues.\u00a0 And I just loved it. I loved reading Shakespeare. [I personally think his plays would make great plot lines for scripted reality television shows, but, hey, to each his own.]<\/p>

So, I did it.\u00a0 I taught it. I found a simplified version and off I went.\u00a0 For the first time that year, I taught something because I wanted to and not because it was what someone else thought I should teach. I taught my passion and you should teach your passion!<\/p>

Too often in English classrooms, we have people \u2013 whether they are students, parents, other teachers, administration, coaches, district, board members \u2013 tell us what we should be teaching.\u00a0 Or more specifically, what we shouldn\u2019t be teaching.<\/p>

Why? Because they don\u2019t like or agree with it.\u00a0 Because they don\u2019t think kids today will connect with it.\u00a0 Because they think it isn\u2019t \u201cright\u201d for our students.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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But here\u2019s the thing \u2013 when English teachers teach texts that they love, they are better teachers. Period.<\/p>

I remember being forced to teach The Red Pony<\/em> by John Steinbeck in my student teaching.\u00a0 It was awful. I didn\u2019t connect with it. So, I didn\u2019t do it justice.\u00a0 I think we read it in 7 days \u2013 we flew through it, so I could get to teaching something I wanted to teach.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>

It doesn\u2019t matter if the text you are forced to teach is good or not \u2013 we just don\u2019t do as good of a job teaching it if we aren\u2019t passionate about it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>

Because of the way standards are written in ELA, we can teach almost any text and still fulfill standards.\u00a0 Theme. Check. Character. Check. Argument. Check. Just as we can write an informational paper on any topic, we can teach theme using any novel, short story, or poem we wish.<\/p>

So, teach your passion!\u00a0 Fight for the texts that you can teach well and texts you want to teach.\u00a0 Focus on teaching those standards and skills using the texts you choose.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>

Oh, and by the way \u2013 my gang member students \u2026 LOVED Romeo and Juliet.\u00a0 They even asked to rewrite it into modern text and performed 5 of these rewritten key scenes for the school and families.<\/p>

I think I was supposed to teach Antigone.\u00a0 I\u2019m so glad I didn\u2019t.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>

And after that \u2013 I taught Shakespeare every year.\u00a0 It became one of the favorite units of the year \u2013 for me and for my students.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

But here\u2019s the thing \u2013 when English teachers teach texts that they love, they are better teachers. Period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":432,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[27],"class_list":["post-452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-secondary-language-arts","tag-secondary-language-arts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1474,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions\/1474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}