One of the most important things we can do as teachers is reflect, and so that’s why I love this annual blog post. It’s been my new year tradition for the past several years (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018), and choosing only five memorable teaching moments is always so hard, but here goes: My top five classroom success stories of 2019! This year in review… Teaching Gatsby for the first time in forever and writing the unit plan for it. A little bit Disney Frozen on the brain here, but it works. In the past, I had taught The Great Gatsby mainly in … [Read more...]
A Movie Review of HBO’s Fahrenheit 451 from a High School English Teacher
Finally... the moment my students and I have been wishing and waiting for - an updated movie remake of one of our favorite novels: Fahrenheit 451. We always have a little fun playing the role of director, choosing which of our favorite actors and actresses should play Montag, Beatty, Mildred, Clarisse, and all the other memorable characters. However, we do always wonder... would Bradbury actually approve of any screen adaptation of his magnum opus? I had so many questions before watching HBO's hot, new adaptation: Who would play Montag? … [Read more...]
Books Without Movies Your Students Will Want to Read… Anyway
With so many books being turned into money-making movie franchises, it might be hard to get your students to read something that hasn’t been recreated on the big screen. While I’m not opposed to the book-turned-movie selections (my Netflix queue is full and waiting for me to binge a few), I’ve always sought out books for my students that weren’t as popular. I’ll chalk it up to erring on the side of wanting to be different. Either way, the five books I’ve taught below haven’t hit the box office yet, and the fact that there are titles … [Read more...]
