Teachers' Helpmate

Help for the Harried ELA Teacher

Wharram Percy, the best preserved of the deserted medieval villages in the Yorkshire Wolds.

Note: I snapped the above photo on a walking trip in England some summers ago. A once thriving medieval village, by the early 16th century Wharram Percy had succumbed to the combined impact of raids by the Scots, the Black Death, and, especially, the shift to sheep farming. It's here as a reminder of what can happen through disuse and abandonment. Let's not allow this to happen to the literary classics!

About

A retired English teacher, I taught 9^th-12^th grades for 20 plus years, most of them at a specialized (math, science, and technology) public high school in a large city in the northeast. I subsequently worked as an adjunct in a graduate English education program mentoring new English teachers, some fresh from college, others entering teaching as a second career. I later led a book discussion group (featuring British, American, and European classics) at a public library near my home.

In all of the above ventures I produced (and saved, once I joined the computer age) lesson plans, study guides, essay assignments, quizzes, and the like. I remember what it was like devising these late at night after critiquing my students’ essays, preparing for my next day’s classes, cooking dinner, taking care of my son, checking up on my elderly mother . . . . Recently it occurred to me that my collection of saved documents might actually be useful to current English Language Arts teachers, who undoubtedly face the same time constraints as I did and who, on top of that, are now being asked to adapt to the new Common Core standards, standards which require a "content-rich curriculum" for effective implementation.Thus was born the idea for "Teachers' Helpmate." I was further motivated by the view held by some educators today that the classics don't speak to today's diverse K-12 students and ought to be abandoned in favor of more relevant contemporary works. But isn't it the job of teachers to make the great books of the past accessible to those students, not to rob them--and future students--of their rich cultural heritage?

In what follows I will indicate for which grade the resource was originally designed. I plan to add notes and discussion questions from the adult book group I led, and from time to time I will add comments on my current reading of old and new classics as well as books and articles on education. These on-going comments with be listed on the sidebar under "Literature Log."

Please feel free to copy or modify anything here that may be of use to you. If you have questions or comments, please contact me at teachershelpmate1@gmail.com