As a professor of English Education in Florida, many of my preservice teachers (PSTs) voice concerns about how they can bring racially and ethnically diverse voices and young adult novels into their future classrooms. And while YAL deserves its own place in curricula because it is just as rigorous, complex, and valuable as the Western literary canon (and more engaging), I also acknowledge the reality that the PSTs in my courses live and will work in a state that is systematically trying to further marginalize Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) and LGBTQ+ students in schools through censorship (PEN America, 2024, 2023).
In my methods and YAL courses, we examine different ways to push back on district, school, and individual levels through creative insubordination techniques (Gutiérrez, 2016; Rigell et al, 2022; Smith & Banack, 2023; Nam, 2023). We also talk about quick and practical strategies to bring diverse voices into classrooms with less fear. One of these ways is through utilizing selections of verse novels. At the 2023 ALAN Workshop, authors Mariama J. Lockington and Candice Iloh spoke about how they write verse novels to empower educators to select poems from the entirety of the novel, to more easily introduce diverse voices into the classroom, and to creatively subvert tensions around censorship. My students and I talk about the different ways to utilize verse novels including: reading a poem a day from a verse novel aloud for a warm up (or just because it’s okay to show students we love reading, too!), used as getting to know you activities, selecting pieces from verse novels to teach literary skills (inference, tone, etc.), and selecting poems from verse novels that relate to the theme of your current unit and asking students to draw connections.
Specifically in one activity, detailed below, PSTs found had multiple uses and one student was encouraged to use excerpts from the verse novels to facilitate a mini lesson in their field placement class with 8th graders. Students read three excerpts from the verse novels Chlorine Sky by Mahogany L. Browne, Me(Moth) by Amber McBride, and Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds all centered around “rules”.
In my methods and YAL courses, we examine different ways to push back on district, school, and individual levels through creative insubordination techniques (Gutiérrez, 2016; Rigell et al, 2022; Smith & Banack, 2023; Nam, 2023). We also talk about quick and practical strategies to bring diverse voices into classrooms with less fear. One of these ways is through utilizing selections of verse novels. At the 2023 ALAN Workshop, authors Mariama J. Lockington and Candice Iloh spoke about how they write verse novels to empower educators to select poems from the entirety of the novel, to more easily introduce diverse voices into the classroom, and to creatively subvert tensions around censorship. My students and I talk about the different ways to utilize verse novels including: reading a poem a day from a verse novel aloud for a warm up (or just because it’s okay to show students we love reading, too!), used as getting to know you activities, selecting pieces from verse novels to teach literary skills (inference, tone, etc.), and selecting poems from verse novels that relate to the theme of your current unit and asking students to draw connections.
Specifically in one activity, detailed below, PSTs found had multiple uses and one student was encouraged to use excerpts from the verse novels to facilitate a mini lesson in their field placement class with 8th graders. Students read three excerpts from the verse novels Chlorine Sky by Mahogany L. Browne, Me(Moth) by Amber McBride, and Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds all centered around “rules”.
After reading, students individually brainstormed rules they have to abide by in their lives. I provided them with suggestions of utilizing specific places (e.g. rules at school, sports practice, home, parks, etc.), general rules of society, or rules given by specific people (e.g. guardian, coach, teacher, religious leader, etc.). The class shared some of their rules and then I asked them to put their rules into the format of one of the poems we read from the verse novels. Then students got into groups of 4 and read their poems to one another. I asked them to talk with their group to determine any patterns or similarities they found between their poems and to reflect on what they learned about their classmates while hearing their poems. After that, we once again shared out from their small groups to the whole class. I did this at the beginning of the semester as a “getting to know you” activity for myself and my students and also to provide them with an activity they could take with them into their future classrooms. We discussed how they could also use it as a way to talk about classroom norms and rules at the beginning of the school year (and how to make equitable “rules” in an ELA classroom).
After discussing these excerpts’ utility for the beginning of the school year, students noted how these excerpts could be used during the year as a way to begin conversations with text and around “rules in society.” Students offered ideas about how to use the verse novel poems to discuss gendered “rules” of the 1950’s when reading A Raisin in the Sun or socioeconomic status “rules” when reading The Great Gatsby. They discussed how you could have students write “rules” that specific characters in novels abide by as a way to study characterization. The versatility of these excerpts from the verse novels is what makes this activity so useful. One student in particular was in an 8th grade classroom that just started a unit on utopia and dystopia and the students were about to read “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegot. He brought up the idea of using the excerpts with his mentor teacher and was encouraged to facilitate a lesson on rules the students felt society expected of them. He used this as a warm up before reading “Harrison Bergeron” and then returned to it after reading to have students make a list of rules the society in “Harrison Bergeron” expected. They then debated whether the rules in “Harrison Bergeron” made that society a utopia or dystopia– drawing it back to their unit theme. Verse novels offer opportunities for educators constrained by restrictive policies to bring excerpts of texts by BIPOC authors into their classrooms with more confidence. They can also be useful for educators who aren’t restricted by policy, but perhaps whose budgets do not allow them to purchase new class sets of books to still bring contemporary, diverse voices into their curricula.
Up next on my verse novel to-be-read list are:
Onyx and Beyond by Amber McBride
Abuela, Don’t Forget Me by Rex Ogle
An Impossible Thing to Say by Arya Shahi
Arianna Banack is an assistant professor of English education at the University of South Florida. She was formerly a secondary ELA teacher in Connecticut. Her work focuses on how preservice and inservice teachers can use diverse young adult literature to teach towards critical literacy. She can be reached at [email protected]
References:
Gutiérrez, R. (2016). Strategies for creative insubordination in mathematics teaching. Teaching
for Excellence and Equity in Mathematics, 7(1), 52-60.
Nam, R. (September, 2023). Teacher use of diverse literature in secondary English Language Arts classrooms: District barriers and resistance strategies. Study and Scrutiny, 6(1), 1-20.
PEN America. (2024, April 16). Banned in the USA: Narrating the crisis. https://pen.org/report/narrating-the-crisis/#heading-0
PEN America. (2023, May 17). PEN America files lawsuit against Florida school district over unconstitutional book bans. https://pen.org/press-release/pen-america-files-lawsuit-against-florida-school-district-over-unconstitutional-book-bans/
After discussing these excerpts’ utility for the beginning of the school year, students noted how these excerpts could be used during the year as a way to begin conversations with text and around “rules in society.” Students offered ideas about how to use the verse novel poems to discuss gendered “rules” of the 1950’s when reading A Raisin in the Sun or socioeconomic status “rules” when reading The Great Gatsby. They discussed how you could have students write “rules” that specific characters in novels abide by as a way to study characterization. The versatility of these excerpts from the verse novels is what makes this activity so useful. One student in particular was in an 8th grade classroom that just started a unit on utopia and dystopia and the students were about to read “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegot. He brought up the idea of using the excerpts with his mentor teacher and was encouraged to facilitate a lesson on rules the students felt society expected of them. He used this as a warm up before reading “Harrison Bergeron” and then returned to it after reading to have students make a list of rules the society in “Harrison Bergeron” expected. They then debated whether the rules in “Harrison Bergeron” made that society a utopia or dystopia– drawing it back to their unit theme. Verse novels offer opportunities for educators constrained by restrictive policies to bring excerpts of texts by BIPOC authors into their classrooms with more confidence. They can also be useful for educators who aren’t restricted by policy, but perhaps whose budgets do not allow them to purchase new class sets of books to still bring contemporary, diverse voices into their curricula.
Up next on my verse novel to-be-read list are:
Onyx and Beyond by Amber McBride
Abuela, Don’t Forget Me by Rex Ogle
An Impossible Thing to Say by Arya Shahi
Arianna Banack is an assistant professor of English education at the University of South Florida. She was formerly a secondary ELA teacher in Connecticut. Her work focuses on how preservice and inservice teachers can use diverse young adult literature to teach towards critical literacy. She can be reached at [email protected]
References:
Gutiérrez, R. (2016). Strategies for creative insubordination in mathematics teaching. Teaching
for Excellence and Equity in Mathematics, 7(1), 52-60.
Nam, R. (September, 2023). Teacher use of diverse literature in secondary English Language Arts classrooms: District barriers and resistance strategies. Study and Scrutiny, 6(1), 1-20.
PEN America. (2024, April 16). Banned in the USA: Narrating the crisis. https://pen.org/report/narrating-the-crisis/#heading-0
PEN America. (2023, May 17). PEN America files lawsuit against Florida school district over unconstitutional book bans. https://pen.org/press-release/pen-america-files-lawsuit-against-florida-school-district-over-unconstitutional-book-bans/
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