Meet our Contributor
| Kate Youngblood has been teaching 9th and 11th grade English at Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans, Louisiana for the past eleven years. She graduated from Louisiana State University with a BA in English, secondary education. She later earned her M.A.Ed. from Wake Forest University. She has presented at the National Council of Teachers of English Annual Convention six times and has been published as a co-author in Signal Journal and English in Education. Kate was selected as the Louisiana State High School Teacher of the Year in 2021. She can be reached at [email protected]. |  |
The Collectors edited by A. S. King by Kate Youngblood
I live in a notoriously weird city.
In New Orleans, we wear costumes on weekdays, we second line at funerals, we gleefully rip heads off of crawfish before devouring them while out of towners look on in horror.
Weirdness in high school is often undervalued, however, even in a city as joyfully odd as New Orleans. High school students crave assimilation, believing adolescence will be easier if they fit in rather than stand out. I teach 9th graders, and one of my favorite parts about them is, especially in August, many still enter the school with their weirdness intact. I view it as part of my job to make them see those strange, different, out of sync parts of themselves as critical to their identity.
In New Orleans, we wear costumes on weekdays, we second line at funerals, we gleefully rip heads off of crawfish before devouring them while out of towners look on in horror.
Weirdness in high school is often undervalued, however, even in a city as joyfully odd as New Orleans. High school students crave assimilation, believing adolescence will be easier if they fit in rather than stand out. I teach 9th graders, and one of my favorite parts about them is, especially in August, many still enter the school with their weirdness intact. I view it as part of my job to make them see those strange, different, out of sync parts of themselves as critical to their identity.
| So, I was thrilled to read A.S. King’s foreword to her Printz award winning anthology, The Collectors: “There is currency in weirdness… There are no rules. There is no normal… You can be as weird as you want” (3). This advice to students echoes so much about how I want my students to feel as they enter high school; to have a collection of short stories where weirdness was the operating principle felt like kismet. My freshmen were assigned 5 of the short stories from this collection (though, of course, I encouraged them to read them all!): “Play House” by Anna-Marie McLemore, “Take It From Me” by David Levithan, “Ring of Fire” by Jenny Torres-Sanchez, “A Recording For Carole Before It All Goes” by Jason Reynolds, and “Sweet Everlasting” by M.T. Anderson. |  |
These stories allowed us to dive deeply into identifying literary elements and techniques, building student confidence for their ability to notice the moves authors make and connecting them to their impact. “Play House” showed us how metaphors impact mood. “Take It From Me” made us question narrator reliability. “Ring of Fire” illuminated the power of symbols. “A Recording for Carole Before It All Goes” pushed syntax to the forefront of our discussions. “Sweet Everlasting” put characterization on full display.
These texts were all rich and layered, but still accessible to 9th graders. More importantly, they were all so obviously weird and different, making them exciting for students to discuss. More than 5 parents reached out to me to say that their kids were actually talking to them about the reading at home! One said she’d overheard her daughter on the phone with another students, animatedly saying, “But do you think the fire was real?” The stories did what great literature does: crept into their brains and their lives beyond the confines of the school building.
These texts were all rich and layered, but still accessible to 9th graders. More importantly, they were all so obviously weird and different, making them exciting for students to discuss. More than 5 parents reached out to me to say that their kids were actually talking to them about the reading at home! One said she’d overheard her daughter on the phone with another students, animatedly saying, “But do you think the fire was real?” The stories did what great literature does: crept into their brains and their lives beyond the confines of the school building.
For our final project on the unit, students created a literary square analysis project, which I adapted from The Daring English Teacher. Here is the version that I gave my students: our project. Grading these projects did the same thing for me that reading the stories did for my students: it delighted me. I loved seeing their creative interpretations of the texts, I loved learning which students had read beyond the five required stories, I loved reading their pithy and funny and heartfelt reviews.
I always struggle with whether or not to start my 9th grade classes with a whole class novel. I like the experience of reading something together, in unison. But sometimes starting with a novel feels simultaneously over and underwhelming: students who are transitioning to a whole new world get bogged down in reading 20-30 pages a night and easily fall behind, class discussions sometimes take a while to heat up as the exposition drags on, and trust in me and my taste is under established.
I always struggle with whether or not to start my 9th grade classes with a whole class novel. I like the experience of reading something together, in unison. But sometimes starting with a novel feels simultaneously over and underwhelming: students who are transitioning to a whole new world get bogged down in reading 20-30 pages a night and easily fall behind, class discussions sometimes take a while to heat up as the exposition drags on, and trust in me and my taste is under established.
This collection of short stories feels like the perfect solution. The texts are challenging and varied. The protagonists range from relatable to demonic (literally). There is some story in the anthology for each student. I am so happy to have found this collection which allowed me to set the tone for both the nitty gritty and the existential elements of my classroom: this is how we do English and this is how you do life.
A.S. King’s final words in the foreword anchor my class now: “Be defiantly creative. Make art of your life, especially if you don’t consider yourself an artist – collect all the little pieces of you and make your story. When you look back many years from now, you will see something extraordinary and impossible to duplicate. You will see you” (3).
A.S. King’s final words in the foreword anchor my class now: “Be defiantly creative. Make art of your life, especially if you don’t consider yourself an artist – collect all the little pieces of you and make your story. When you look back many years from now, you will see something extraordinary and impossible to duplicate. You will see you” (3).
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