Once upon a time you were forced to read a book in English class. Maybe you’re an avid reader and this was a great experience, maybe it was a hassle and you hated every minute of it, but no matter your stance on reading, we’ve all had to sit down, cover to cover, with a teacher-assigned book. But how was this book determined? Was it your teacher’s favorite growing up? Were they required by the state to teach it? Did they simply pick the first thing they saw in the library?
The answer is none of the above. The English curriculum at Wayland High School is a carefully curated combination of teacher and student input, designed to maximize student engagement and provoke deeper analytical skills. The English Department is fortunate in the fact that it is granted wiggle room in the literary education offered, meaning it isn’t required to teach specific pieces. English teachers can determine what’s offered in their classroom libraries, what book their class studies and how they teach it, allowing for a more specific and flexible curriculum.
With the power to determine when pieces have aged out of their relevance, teachers at WHS are faced with the question, how does one determine a book’s expiration date?
Finding Balance
With modern day society making strides for a more accepting and progressive environment, it’s not a shocker that some things written in the past don’t align with these values. That being said, there are forms of older and even ancient literature that students can learn from while relating to the characters. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Antigone” and “The Great Gatsby” are all pieces of 100-year-old literature taught at WHS. These books tackle themes students can understand and apply to everyday life, even if they weren’t displayed that way in the novel.
Studying literature from different eras offers valuable insight into the past that can help students understand the present.
“I think it’s still important to look back at older literature, because it still has a lot of depth to it,” senior Fiona Wang said.
The problems with literary relevance begin when these themes become drowned out by controversial and potentially harmful societal background noise. When this additional sound becomes so intense that readers can’t relate to the characters anymore, the impact of the book begins to fade away, leaving only confusion and discomfort behind. To make the most out of student’s experiences with these pieces, the department has to maintain fluidity and strive to keep up with the times.
“It’s easy to keep teaching the same books over and over again, but what happens is the students change,” English Department Head Peter Galalis said. “The world changes our own thinking, and sometimes our values or beliefs change, so we have to be dynamic and flexible.”
An example of this at WHS was the discontinued freshman classes’ study of J. D. Salinger’s, “The Catcher in the Rye.” This short novel published in 1951 follows the young protagonist, Holden Caulfield, as he struggles to tackle impending adulthood. Although written as a coming-of-age piece, the seemingly unintentional and unaddressed topics of casual sexism and homophobia throughout the book turned it into an exceedingly controversial piece in modern day society for some.
According to Goldin, the controversy escalated to the point where nearly every passage required either an explanation of historical references or a trigger warning for derogatory language — interruptions that pulled students away from analyzing themes and characters.
“You reach a point as a teacher where you’re looking at the class, and they’re just not getting any of the references,” English teacher Gwen Goldin said. “I’m starting to have to excuse some things that I think even 40 years ago were still problematic.”
When teachers notice this need for explanation becoming more frequent, they have to ask, “What are my students getting out of this?”
When fewer than half the class see themselves in the characters and most students can’t apply the themes to their own lives, the book’s societal background noise may be too loud. At that point, teachers must judge when the material shifts from impactful to unhelpful.
“We’re looking at this book and there’s that question about, ‘Where’s the balance?’,” Goldin said. “If so much of the book has to be pardoned, explained and prepared for students to start thinking, [we start to wonder] if we still want to teach it.”
It can be difficult to balance the potential learning opportunities of older books with concerns of fading relevance. An efficient curriculum can’t have all new-age books or all old books, but there’s a time and a place for both. That being said, when push comes to shove, some books simply need to be cut.
“You replace the old with the new,” Goldin said. “English departments have been doing that since there were English departments in this country.”
Making the switch
So what should be done after a book has been determined to be out of balance? To ensure students continue to develop the same analytical skills, the English department selects a replacement text that explores similar themes.
In place of the untimely “Catcher in the Rye,” freshmen received copies of the 2019 young-adult novel, “Patron Saints of Nothing.” This book follows a young, Filipino-American teenager as he explores his culture and what it means to grow up. Students evaluated the same concepts of adulthood and personal growth, but they were able to analyze them in a way that not only was relevant, but promoted cultural awareness and acceptance as well.
“You still got a character on a journey of self discovery, but this time it wasn’t homophobic,” Goldin said.
After receiving positive feedback among students in test runs of the book, it was implemented into the freshman english curriculum.
This decision couldn’t have been made without the feedback of students and teachers, emphasizing the importance of collaboration. The realization that a book may be at its deathbed can be noticed in a variety of ways, but it all comes back to open communication. This kind of feedback is a core value in the English Departments, as they strive to constantly facilitate the kinds of conversations that strengthen the education they offer.
Students are familiar with being dismissed early on Wednesdays, which typically grants the time to catch up on work, hang out before practice or meet friends. English teachers on the other hand, spend their free afternoons in department meetings, discussing what is, what could be and what should be read in their classrooms.
“A very common conversation for the English department to have is, ‘What books are we reading?’,” Goldin said. “We’re very excited by the prospect of finding an even greater book than what we already have.”
Teachers can bounce ideas off of one another, explain what they noticed went well in class and share potential critiques of pieces in the current curriculum. This kind of collaboration promotes growth and openness in the curriculum, as well as an environment where the feedback of educators is given a spotlight.
Nevertheless, these kinds of questions are large and complicated, and the conversations don’t always wrap up nicely. This doesn’t make them any less crucial though, as teachers leave with key takeaways and inspiration after meetings.
“It’s messy and complex, but it always leaves me thoughtful and invigorated, thinking through these challenges,” Galalis said. “I love that our department is a place where we can talk about these things and bounce ideas off of each other.”
It’s not just teachers’ observations that determine when a book should be pulled though. Student voices play a pivotal role in the curriculum, as they share the first person perspective that these books are trying to play too. As the primary consumers of these texts, their observations and questions are noticed by teachers who use those interactions to determine how a book is landing with the class. It is these kinds of interactions that add towards an understanding of how impactful a piece is.
“We always think we know what’s best for kids, but we [teachers] don’t know everything,” Goldin said. “I know what I’m trying to do, but it’s really, really important for me to hear back from the people who are in the classroom with me.”
Dealing with conflict
Students also have the option to give feedback or even object to a book if they find the content triggering or the language targeting. Narrative text is typically rooted in conflict in one way or another, with it being a key part of a typical narrative arc. Sometimes this conflict within text can spill over into real life, with certain aspects triggering people in different ways. With classes of people each with different life-experiences, sometimes this figurative stress can cause more harm than good to readers.
“We can’t predict every possible place of complication for our students,” Goldin said. “We all have different backgrounds and different things hit us in different ways.”
While group-read texts are carefully selected for the enrichment of students, accommodation comes before all else in the English Department, and at the end of the day, their biggest goal is to get people reading impactful literature. If a student has a conversation with their teacher and explains that the current text is triggering, the teacher will get in contact with staff and family and find a solution that works for everyone.
“We really have to take care of everybody, so if it’s clear that the student is not going to be able to do it we go through another process that involves parents and guidance,” Goldin said.
Answering the big questions
Understanding how one handles the complexity of these decisions as a student is key to the quality of feedback, as well as the understanding of what makes an impactful class. Goldin runs a research project with her junior classes designed to do just this. Students are tasked to answer the question, ‘What books should be added to our classroom libraries, and are there any books that shouldn’t?’
“I wanted them to wrestle with this question, because it’s a very real world concern,” Goldin said.
According to Goldin, in the beginning stages of the project, the majority of students believed that no book should be restricted from the class libraries. This stance became less sturdy though, as concepts of derogatory language and graphic content joined the debate. Students reported that they were uncomfortable with the presence of sexually and violently graphic passages with little to no literary value.
Another source of concern regarded themes surrounding unaddressed derogatory or degrading concepts that the author didn’t challenge in any way. A common agreement was that the classrooms shouldn’t give their support of unaddressed discriminatory themes through their presence in the libraries. The situation changed though if the author was using these themes to convey a message or warning against hateful beliefs or stereotypes. According to Goldin, students mostly agreed that if the derogatory passages were in place to support a goal of abolishing discrimination, it was suitable for the classroom.
“I was quite proud of them for having concern around books that had unchallenged things like sexism and racism,” Goldin said. “They found that the book really did need to land on the side in some important way of respecting the dignity of people’s identities and identity markers.”
While it may seem like it’s out of our control, students shape their curriculum every day. From our questions, projects and feedback, teachers try to use students’ voices to create a stronger and effective learning environment. By constantly shifting what’s taught, our curriculums grow with us, pulling from our real world culture to maximize impact. Our classroom libraries are a carefully curated collection of pieces that reflect this, tying the past to the present, and molding the takeaways future generations will carry with them.
“Libraries are the seat of American democracy, and a democracy is only as good as the education of its population,” Goldin said. “As culture shifts, we have to make sure that we are choosing books that are still speaking to our students in a way that is meaningful and impactful.”