As English teachers, we strive to build a bridge between literature and lived experience. Thus, this presentation will focus on a method of instruction that enhances textual relevance and centers authentic first-person narratives by including diverse guest speakers, current event curricular tie-ins, and experiential learning activities in the high school classroom. Specifically, presenters will share examples of how they brought The Kite Runner, Night, Just Mercy, and Lord of the Flies to life within the English classroom to support student engagement, foster compassion and empathy, and push analytical inquiry. The presenters, four experienced English teachers, will engage participants with materials, discussion, and student feedback, while also offering suggestions and resources for further application and adaptation to texts beyond those included in the presentation.
Blog Archives
Plot Twists and Power Ups: Turning Curriculum into Gameplay
One of my fascinations as an educator has been gamification, creating novel ways to teach, review, and contextualize content. In this breakout session, I will present some of the activities I have created, such as a book scavenger hunt to correspond with Fahrenheit 451, a crime scene investigation that corresponds with Macbeth, or vocab battleship, a vocabulary review game I use quite often in my classroom. During this session, I will offer some advice on what to consider when creating games or interactive classroom experiences, as well as explain how utilizing AI can make a seemingly daunting task very achievable. This session will most appeal to middle school and high school teachers who seek novel ways to incorporate active learning and gamification into their lessons.
The Forgottonia Project: Using Local History & Storytelling in the Classroom
What happens when students see their own community’s history as the center of their learning? The Forgottonia Project uses podcasting, creative writing, art, and oral history to connect students with local stories—from Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology to the legacy of Free Frank McWorter. In this interactive session, we’ll explore how rural voices and overlooked histories can engage Gen Z learners, empower teachers as practitioners, and showcase authentic, performative assessments. Together we’ll examine research on student disengagement, the power of performative assessments, and the role of humanities-centered education in difficult times. Participants will experiment with strategies like the Question Formulation Technique (QFT) and leave with adaptable tools to create learner-centered environments that amplify student and teacher voices while using stories, past and present, to grow more engaging classrooms.
It’s Your Cue! Using Shakespeare’s Cue Scripts to Unpack Shakespeare’s Folio Clues
Shakespeare’s work provides a wealth of themes and complex characters to engage our 21st century students, though Early Modern English provides challenges in reading and understanding his plays for many students. We can, and should, supplement any modern edition and its resources with excerpts from the First Folio as well as cue scripts similar to those Shakespeare’s actors used to apply the surprising clues the Bard embedded in his plays often missing or obscured in the edited versions students read.
Agency, Advocacy, and Action: The Art of Shaping Global Citizens and Defining Solidarity
English classes are natural spaces to read the world and expand the walls of the classroom space beyond books and people in the physical space. The opportunity to do so allows for English teachers to shape global citizenship and show their own solidarity through their craft. How do we model solidarity and global awareness and action? How do we leverage grammar and other discipline-related skills and crafts in the name of voice, advocacy, agency and change? As new laws emerge in an attempt to censor and prohibit this work from impactfully and effectively happening in classrooms, equity advocates in schools across the country struggle to engage in liberatory instruction (Love, 2000). This workshop will tackle the challenges of being equitable in school settings by unpacking equity and solidarity through action. Equity work is meeting students’ social emotional needs, building criticality (Mohammed, 2020), getting to know students beyond a surface level (Singleton & Hays, 2008), integrating holism (Safir & Dugan, 2021) in our views of students and the funds of learning they bring into the classroom (Jaber, 2022).