Love Hurts, Lit Helps

How English Class Can Teach Teens to Improve Their Relationships, Friendships, and Communities

Andrew Simmons

Love hurts. Breaking up is hard to do. For all the joy that relationships and friendships can bring, showing romantic interest, establishing boundaries, and expressing identities as partners and friends isn’t easy for teens. They navigate an often ugly social universe. Even commonplace struggles can derail academic focus and harm emotional health.

English teachers hope to give students communication skills, a love of literature, a passport to an intellectually vibrant life rich in opportunity. Through discussions of canonical works of literature, assignment ideas, anecdotes from teaching, and student perspectives, this book outlines how an academically rigorous English class can also heal, empower, and provide wisdom for teens weathering storms in their social lives.

English class is health class. Widely taught novels brim with rich lessons about courtship, love, heartbreak, sexuality, bonds, and belonging. Learning to write stories, reflections, and arguments, speak confidently, and listen critically gives students powerful tools for self-expression, advocacy, and empathy in their relationships and friendships.

The stakes are high and the rewards far-reaching. Students with healthier social lives do better academically, but they also end up becoming more responsible, caring grown-ups capable of improving an adult society that too often feels unsafe and tragically bereft of compassion.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 164 • Trim: 6¼ x 9

978-1-4758-4828-1 • Hardback • January 2020 • $89.00 • (£68.00)

978-1-4758-4829-8 • Paperback • January 2020 • $45.00 • (£35.00)

978-1-4758-4830-4 • eBook • January 2020 • $42.50 • (£35.00)

Subjects: Education / Student Life & Student Affairs, Education / Arts in Education, Education / Secondary / Reading and Phonics, Education / Secondary / Language Arts

Love Hurts, Lit Helps

How English Class Can Teach Teens to Improve Their Relationships, Friendships, and Communities

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

Love hurts. Breaking up is hard to do. For all the joy that relationships and friendships can bring, showing romantic interest, establishing boundaries, and expressing identities as partners and friends isn’t easy for teens. They navigate an often ugly social universe. Even commonplace struggles can derail academic focus and harm emotional health.

English teachers hope to give students communication skills, a love of literature, a passport to an intellectually vibrant life rich in opportunity. Through discussions of canonical works of literature, assignment ideas, anecdotes from teaching, and student perspectives, this book outlines how an academically rigorous English class can also heal, empower, and provide wisdom for teens weathering storms in their social lives.

English class is health class. Widely taught novels brim with rich lessons about courtship, love, heartbreak, sexuality, bonds, and belonging. Learning to write stories, reflections, and arguments, speak confidently, and listen critically gives students powerful tools for self-expression, advocacy, and empathy in their relationships and friendships.

The stakes are high and the rewards far-reaching. Students with healthier social lives do better academically, but they also end up becoming more responsible, caring grown-ups capable of improving an adult society that too often feels unsafe and tragically bereft of compassion.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 164 • Trim: 6¼ x 9

978-1-4758-4828-1 • Hardback • January 2020 • $89.00 • (£68.00)

978-1-4758-4829-8 • Paperback • January 2020 • $45.00 • (£35.00)

978-1-4758-4830-4 • eBook • January 2020 • $42.50 • (£35.00)

Subjects: Education / Student Life & Student Affairs, Education / Arts in Education, Education / Secondary / Reading and Phonics, Education / Secondary / Language Arts

Author

Originally from Kentucky, Andrew Simmons is a public high school English teacher and writer in Northern California. He has written for The Atlantic, Edutopia, Vox, The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and other publications.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Foreword: by Thomas Newkirk

Preface

Introduction

Part I: Texts

Chapter 1. Of Mice and Men

Chapter 2.Othello

Chapter 3.The Odyssey

Chapter 4.Hamlet

Chapter 5.Beloved

Chapter 6. (More) Contemporary Selections: Jennifer Egan, Junot Diaz, and Sandra Cisneros

Part II: Skills

Chapter 7. Storytelling, Reflection, and Argument

Chapter 8. Speaking and Listening

Conclusion

Appendix: Major Assessments and Relevant Common Core Standards

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Reviews

Struggling to squeeze a social-emotional learning unit into an already packed curriculum? Andrew Simmons offers a perfect solution: rethink our literature lessons. Querying the attitudes and actions of fictional characters, students begin to examine their own. Contemplating the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in the lives of others offers insight into their own. Lit really can help!
— Carol Jago, past president, National Council of Teachers of English; author, “The Book in Question: Why and How Reading Is in Crisis”

Andrew Simmons’ approach to teaching high school English helps students develop academic and social skills they will need to negotiate their world. He uses the themes of canon to enable his student to explore their sense of identity, social relationships, and their personal journey. This book explains and exemplifies how a teacher can connect the students’ interests and social concerns to literature. While developing needed academic reading, writing, and discussion skills, students explore their own lives through the universal themes of literature. This student-centered approach allows them to examine stories from different perspectives and become confident critical thinkers. This approach can empower students towards activism and provide wisdom to weather the challenges of high school in the 21^st century.
— Phyllis Goldsmith, Director of Teacher Development, UC-Berkeley History Social Science Project