I Wish I was Teaching a YA Class this Fall

While many of you are working to put finishing touches on a syllabus for your YA class, I am wishing I was teaching a YA class this fall. Alas, not my turn. (I guess they don't know I would probably teach it for free.) Don't worry I am still working on a couple of syllabi for other courses before students arrive next Monday. 

I can't help but think about which books I would include, which books I would book talk, and how I would use the weekend picks  as a ready resource for my students who might be reluctant consumers of YA. (I love what my colleagues have chosen so far this year). I keep thinking about what approach I might take: historical, genre, focusing on awards, including Nonfiction, or making sure they discover YA verse novels. Would I include author studies? Should I introduce pedagogy by including literature circle activities? Should I include films with adolescent themes as I know that Angela Insenga and Angel Daniel Matos will be doing? The possibilities are both endless and intriguing. I am a bit jealous, but I will get over it as I watch what what all of you are doing.

What Would I Do?

First, I would use my colleague's posts for this blog as a way to start a variety of conversations. Most of these blogs are relatively short, but directly address interesting topics.

Here are five that I think are worth revisiting over and over again.

1. I love Padma Venkatraman's post about verse novels' by a verse novelist. You can find it here. She talks about writing her first verse novel, A Time to Dance and a list of others including Inside Out & Back Again, Crossover, and Brown Girl Dream. The last book is a novel I like so much, that I want to reread every time I think about it. I wrote about it for First Opinions, Second Reactions (a journal everyone should follow) about a year ago and i wish every one felt as strongly about it as I do.

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2. This one is a cheat. I have been studying YA syllabi for while. I have seen a lot of great ones. People are doing great work. When I first discovered Anglea Insenga's syllabus in blew me away. She was thinking about things that I hadn't considered and now her ideas are always there. She has written for the blog twice and both are exciting. The first is Between the Bookends: YA and Critical Collaboration and the second is YA in the Wild:  Building Literacy through Humanities-Based Service Learning Projects

3. There are a lot of teaches who struggle to include Shakespeare in their classroom. Most of these teachers love Shakespeare and really do want their students to love him as well. At the same time, very few of them consider including Shakespeare inspired YA as a tool to engage students with the bard. Don't get me wrong, I loved teaching Shakespeare and felt that I did a pretty good job engage students, but I did get them all. Some were clearly disinterested, some were just enduring school, and some were actually readers who couldn't be bothered with my agenda as they just went ahead reading what interested them. If I were back in a classroom and working with Shakespeare, I would definitely use Anne Cramer's post: Too Much Of A Good Thing: A Condensed Version of the World of Shakespeare as a guiding light.

4. Robert Prickett has produced several post for the blog. You can find them on the contributors page. Decide to include Robert here because he has an expertise in YA that I don't have. I am not even close. I think he can suggest YA graphic novels in his sleep. AS illustrated by the wide variety of contributors, we all have different strengths and interests. I can introduce my students to my students, but Robert can inform and inspire graphic novels in a ways that are worth revisiting as you take about this genre. I would start with this one: YA Graphic Mysteries by Robert Prickett and Casey Cothran​​

5. Okay, the last one is selfish. I think we are often overlooking the cross curricular and collaborative possibilities of using YA in the curriculum. For my fifth pick I have selected a post that my social studies colleague, Paul Binford, and I wrote about some of our explorations in the area: Bridging Curricular Silos Through Collaboration. It has been a great journey but there are lot of things we are trying to figure out. 

This coming fall we will be present at 2018 NCTE Annual Convention in Houston, TX,
 
Our session title is: Crossing Selma’s Bridge with Visual Discovery Strategy and Young Adult Literature: Allowing Voices from the Past to Echo in the Present
 
The Panelist will include: Laurie Halse Anderson, Steven Bickmore, Paul Binford, Brendan Kiely, Luke Rumohr, Gretchen Rumohr-Voskuil, Rich Wallace, and Sandra Neil Wallace.  
 
We will be focusing on Anderson’s Seeds of America series, Wallace and Wallace’s Blood Brother, and Kiely and Reynolds’ All American Boys.

I would be remiss if I didn't explain how much our colleague Gretchen Rumohr-Voskuil has helped us in our efforts. Last January, the three of us had an article in the MIddle Grades Review that explores this further. You can download our article, Crossing Selma's Bridge: Integrating Visual Discovery Strategy and Young Adult Literature to Promote Dialogue and Understanding, here.

Second, there are some new books that I would share with my students. Several of these are getting good traction, but a few need more attention. 

Jeff Zetner's Good Bye Days This book is beautiful as it explores friendship and grief.

Mary H. K. Choi's Emergency Contact This debut novel grabbed me from the beginning. I blazed through it.

A. S. King's I Crawl Through It.  I am not sure I can explain why I love this book. I do know I was thrilled when I heard that my colleague, Sharon Kane, is using this novel a full class read to start her YA course this fall. You see, I am jealous. 

Peter Brown Hoffmeister's Too Shattered for Mending. News flash!! This book is not to be missed. I find myself suggesting this books all summer to people who have been asking me about what new. Really this book is amazing.

Nic Stone's Dear Martin. Okay, I get The Hate U Give, but with all the apologies I can muster, I keep returning to Dear Martin.

Julius Lester's Day of Tears and To Be a Slave. Julius passed this year and we should not forget his contribution to children's and YA literature.

Dashka Slater's The 57 Bus. This is one of those true stories that really helps us show students the value of a variety of genres.

E. K. Johnston's Pursued by a Bear. Shakespeare, Yo!

Elizabeth Partridge's Boots on the Ground. Honor and respect. These book does a great deal for Veterans and joins of host of YA books--fiction and nonfiction.

Okay, it isn't everything, in fact it is only a couple of concrete ideas towards building a syllabus.

To conclude, I want to make it clear that I think there a host of other post on Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday blog that would make a great contributions to a YA course. Last fall, we started almost every class with a common reading of one of the post. It was a great way to introduce a genre, a theoretical lens, an author, or a theme. It was also a quick way to introduce students to scholars and teachers who are researching and teaching young adult literature. They quickly begin to realize that the YA community is vibrant, innovative, creative, and robust.  

Thanks for letting me think a just a little bit about a potential YA course. Since I won't be teaching it, I am focusing on get to NCTE and the ALAN workshop this November. I hope to see you there. I am looking forward to hearing how you constructed your courses.

​Until next week.