Change of Plans

How do I keep students engaged when reading a novel?

That’s a tremendous task for any teacher, but especially a brand new high school teacher. Last year at the beginning of the spring semester in my first year teaching English III, we started reading My Antonia by Willa Cather. Started. I had never read the novel before (a huge error on my part), but I thought I could make it fun and educational on the fly anyway. Fast forward to the first day of reading. I had established the background information on the author and time period in a way that I thought was interesting, so I assumed we would be in for a good one.

I was wrong.

My students were clearly not engaged, even making audible sighs of discontent and giving eye rolls to one another. By my second class of the day, I was already wishing I could do anything except read that novel. Each 45 minute class period felt like it stretched on for 2 hours. We only got through one day of that novel before I e-mailed the vice-principal (who taught this class the year before I did) to see what I can d about it and he taught me an important lesson:

1. It’s okay to change novels mid-read.

If your students are not engaged, they are not going to learn anything. Now that does not mean that you scrap any lesson plan that the students are not over the moon excited about. Some days you have to cover the necessary content, like grammar rules, with as much enthusiasm as possible, hoping that your excitement will rub off on them. But it is okay, even encouraged to switch novels or change up your lesson plans mid-day if it’s clearly not working how you had hoped it would. The most important task for us to do is to teach our students. We cannot teach them if they are not willing to listen. The best thing we can do to counter-act that is to make the content as relevant and intriguing to them as possible.

2. Find a novel that works well for YOU.

Some novels aren’t compatible with your unique style of teaching or your interests. When you do not fully understand or connect with a text, your students know and it rubs off on them. The best moments with my students have been when we are going over content that I love and have a passion for. Having a teacher who is excited about what they were reading made the content come to life for them.

My solution:

Last year, I replaced My Antonia with a novel that I read in my junior year of high school, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. From my own student experience with that text, I enjoyed it because my teacher, Mr. Lewis, truly loved that novel and made Hemingway’s non-descriptive, more literal style of writing exciting. My students connected with that novel much better than the original and I used the opening chapters’ commentary about war to hold a Socratic Seminar about what happens during war. Students brought 3 questions that they had about the chapters that they read or related to what happened in them. It created a broader discussion about world peace and controversial questions over morality during wartime. Some of my students were extremely invested in Henry and Catherine’s relationship. A few of them actually cried at the end of the novel. I loved that my students were investing in the novel and the learning experience. However, I knew that there was another novel that would work best for me.

This year, I decided to change our spring semester novel to a personal favorite of mine since middle school, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Switching to this novel was a no-brainer for me. Not only is this a novel that holds a special place in my heart, but I also have far more experience analyzing it as I have read it for multiple English classes, including once for a university literary theory class. I know the novel like the back of my hand and I love it. This made it the perfect novel for me this year. Before reading this novel with my class, I had fallen into a lackadaisical rut with class content. Once we began to read it, I felt re-inspired. Life began to flood back into my classroom and I enjoyed coming to work each day. My students loved the content because I loved it and brought it to life for them. In between classes, my students would come up to me in the hall and have conversations about how they felt about the novel, which is a huge achievement for me with them. I feel like giving myself permission to experiment with novels has finally led to the right one for me and my class.

Changing novels is did not magically solve all of my student-engagement problems. Each student has such unique hobbies and interests that it would be impossible to pique every single students’ interest to the point of feeling personally invested in it. However, it will help the excitement you feel about the subject be passed on to more kids which is always a plus!