Popular Comparative Choices

Heydeldel

English teachers, what texts are you using this year?

I'm job hunting at the moment and want to brush up on texts while I have time.

eager tortoise

A good place to start might be with the texts that are new to the list. I believe Dermot Bolger's New Town Soul is new, as is the film Death of a Superhero. I'm sure there are others too.

I know some teachers go with the texts from the keynotes book; this year they're using Foster, The Plough and the Stars and The King's Speech. I'm probably going to go with Juno and A Doll's House though I'm not settled on a novel yet. It can be hard to decide, as in our school our English Dept are trying to all stick to the same texts to facilitate students moving classes. There are a lot of divergent ideas, as you can imagine!

Over the summer I went through the list and investigated the texts I wasn't familiar with. It is a lovely task, and I went back to school full of plans. Then I met the group I would be teaching and realised that my lofty ideas were probably not going to work for them. It can be hard to select texts without knowing the cohort of students for whom they are being selected. Some of the novels on the list (e.g. Great Expectations, Pride and Prejudice) would require a lot of effort from all but a small minority of students, and really they don't pay huge dividends when you consider such a text will only constitute 1/3 of the study

implausible

We have to stick to certain texts to facilitate movement too. We've agreed on Circle of Friends as the OL Single Text and a HL comparative and my OL class will be comparing A Doll's House and Juno.

ADH and Juno have unique heroes/heroines and the social settings are nice and different, I'm looking forward to discussing the role of women in both, especially as my class is mainly boys! The relationships have plenty to them, good and meaty as the teenage relationship is nearly more substantial than Nora and yer man's.

CofF is going to be a challenge with boys, but I'm hoping the promise of a sex scene and how different life was back then will be enough to get them hooked.

Heydeldel

Thanks for that.

It's hard applying for jobs and not knowing what is being taught. I thought there might be a popular combination but, you're right, it will change from group to group.

I'd love to teach Foster as I've been to a few intensive fiction workshops given by Claire Keegan - she is a brilliant teacher of writing.