Eight years ago, when I started teaching English at a local homeschool co-op, I took the opportunity to build an academic plan that checked a few essential boxes: writing standards according to MLA format, space for critical thinking and discussion, and exposure to themes and ideas that spotlight the human condition. 

When it came to creating a solid book list, I knew Frankenstein, Fahrenheit 451, and To Kill a Mockingbird would be fixtures. Shakespeare was a given. Then came Beowulf, Animal Farm, and A Study in Scarlet. I pulled poetry from American and British literary periods and added Greek tragedies and American plays to our studies on drama. Each of the classes I teach, which span ninth to twelfth grades, is grounded in classic literature because of its timelessness, influence, and universal appeal. 

And yet, my classes are also grounded in contemporary works, such as Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys, The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, and These Silent Woods by Kimi Cunningham Grant. I’ve included short stories by Ted Chiang and excerpts from Freakonomics. While there’s value in reading the classics, there is plenty of room for studying current points of view. 

Reading both classic and contemporary works accomplishes a few key things: 

1. Students connect the dots between then and now

Where do archetypes come from? What’s the difference between a tragedy and a comedy? What stories help us understand our own history? These are the questions we endeavor to answer by reading classic works of literature. Whether a work was written in Anglo-Saxon England or the American South in the 1930s, there is more to explore than the plot and its characters. Reading classic works paints a vivid picture of the past. They are snapshots of a culture from a specific period of time.

2. They learn about intertextuality firsthand

It’s true that there is nothing new under the sun. While the details of a simple story will morph and change over time, the human condition is the same as it ever was. One of the ways writers explore the human condition is to take a previously written work and reimagine it, or respond to it, with a new story of their own creation. (For example, fans of Ruth Ware might not know that her 2019 novel The Turn of the Key is a reworking of Henry James’ 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw.)

When students read a piece of classic literature, followed by a work of intertextuality, they start to understand how stories are connected throughout time and cultures. Reading Animal Farm by George Orwell and Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn back to back shows students that we are, and always have been, susceptible to corrupt leaders.

3. Everyone will discover a story to enjoy

Give students enough options and they’re bound to finish the school year with a new favorite book. I cannot count the number of times a student has told me, “I thought I’d hate this book, but it’s actually my favorite from the whole year.”

If I can tick enough boxes with genre, characters, and writing style, and present these stories from centuries of creation, every student stands a chance of finding a book to like. Often, their preconceived notions are debunked and they walk away with an appreciation for stories old and new.

One of my guiding principles when it comes to teaching English is making sure there is a balance between the hard and easy, the boring and entertaining, the obvious and abstract. When we vacillate between classic and contemporary literature, we end up with well-rounded respect for storytellers across generations. 

Jennie Miller teaches FundaFunda’s High School English and Independent Honors English classes.

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Here are five reading and writing skills and strengths your graduating senior should have before heading off to college: 

1. Write paragraphs using varying sentence lengths

While this seems obvious, too many teens struggle to shift from text-style writing (short messages with poor punctuation) to long-form academic composition. One of the first lessons I teach in all of my English classes is how to develop paragraphs that have a variety of Simple, Compound, Complex, and Compound-Complex sentences.

Simple sentences offer natural pauses. Compound sentences link two ideas together, and Complex sentences provide continuity from one set of points to the next. From answering essay questions to writing lengthy research papers, presenting information with varying sentence lengths creates a flow of words that’s easier to read and displays the writer’s understanding of the content.

2. Edit with both the eye and ear

If the process of writing a rough draft is tedious, then editing the draft can feel like next-level torture. Reading and re-reading the same sentences – especially if the content is dull – ends up being an ineffective editing method.

This presents the perfect time to read your work out loud because the ear will catch mistakes that the eyes miss. When students read their essays out loud, preferably in a different location than where it was originally written, they’ll stumble upon sentences that don’t flow well, don’t make sense, or have missing bits of information. They’ll hear where the natural breaks should be to start a new paragraph, find a misspelled word, or realize they followed a tangent for way too long.

Take your laptop into a different room, or, better yet, print out your draft and read it aloud outside. Turn silent reading from a screen into an audible production on the front porch, and you’re bound to edit the draft effectively and turn it into a polished essay.

3. Cultivate a discipline for sitting down to read an entire book

One of the trends I’ve noticed in traditional schools is paring down the number of full books high school students read and replacing them with excerpts and articles. I couldn’t believe that some students are graduating high school having read only a few full books across four years. Call me old school, but opting out of novels in exchange for excerpts doesn’t help our already diminishing attention spans.

As a rule, my students are expected to read upwards of eight novels per year, in addition to an array of plays, articles, short stories, and poems. College-bound teens will be expected to engage with textual information effectively, whether in English class or in other disciplines. When students are able to sit down and read a book in its entirety, they are better suited to handle the workload of higher ed and focus on a variety of subjects and assignments therein. (This applies to audiobooks as well.) 

4. Be intellectually curious

Why did the author write this book? What was going on in his/her life that prompted the story? What impact did the novel have when it was published?

So much can be gained when we dig deeper into the meaning of a work, its inspiration, and its influence on literature-at-large. The same concept applies to all areas of academia, in fact. Students who excel in STEM subjects will benefit from reading biographies of their favorite scientists, just as history buffs will benefit from including historical fiction into their repertoire. Knowledge is connective, and being intellectually curious sets you up for a lifetime of learning.

5. Re-read books for deeper understanding

This is a no-brainer for older generations who’ve already experienced re-reading a classic novel as an adult that they were made to read in high school. The same applies to students, even if it means re-reading something only a year or two after the original engagement.

I’ve had the pleasure of hearing back from a few students who re-read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or George Orwell’s Animal Farm years after it was required reading. They got a little older, gained a little more perspective, and re-read the books out of curiosity, only to discover they loved the stories even more than they did the first time and came away with renewed appreciation. I’ve even had a student re-read Beowulf for fun, which is no small feat.

While there’s no need to revisit every book from high school English, going back to a few favorites, or at least the ones that stuck with you, will offer a deeper understanding of the work and re-establish a connection to the information you learned years ago.

Jennie Miller teaches FundaFunda’s High School English and Independent Honors English classes.

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