{"id":2043,"date":"2019-04-07T12:00:12","date_gmt":"2019-04-07T17:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itslitteaching.com\/?p=2043"},"modified":"2023-09-30T12:03:06","modified_gmt":"2023-09-30T16:03:06","slug":"why-i-love-teaching-young-adult-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itslitteaching.com\/why-i-love-teaching-young-adult-literature\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Love Teaching Young Adult Literature"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Why<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If you’ve poked around my Teachers Pay Teachers store<\/a>, my Instagram<\/a>, or my Facebook page<\/a>, it’s probably no surprise that I love teaching young adult literature. It wasn’t something I’ve always done, however. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I started teaching, my school had no curriculum<\/em> for me. I was completely on my own! Now<\/em>, that freedom sounds like heaven. But back in my first year, I had no resources to fall back on, no district friends to steal from, and absolutely nowhere to start.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only resource I had at my disposal was the list of literature sets in the school library. I had to build my whole year from a random list of books <\/strong>that previous teachers had requested. Plus, I still had to figure out everything else about how to do my job. <\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Teachable<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

As I’ve mentioned before, my first year was not smooth<\/a>, nor particularly successful. In fact, the only glimmer of student engagement came from a unit on John Green’s Looking for Alaska.<\/em> So when the district released a standardized curriculum, I breathed a sigh of relief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The curriculum took a lot of weight and decision-making off of my shoulders. I followed it to the best of my ability for a few years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then I realized I was bored. <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Worse, so were my students.<\/strong> All the literature in my classroom was more than fifty years old; the students had a hard time connecting. It felt like all we did was build comprehension. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of my students are far below grade level, making understanding older texts even more difficult. It seemed like we never even got to skills because we were just trying to understand the individual words and sentences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started my journey to add young adult literature to my classroom<\/a> when I finally ran out of patience for our outdated African American unit. The updates went so well, I’ve begun branching out into my other classes and units. I have found that young adult literature is especially great for engaging my at-risk students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Better yet though, it’s engaging for me. <\/strong>When I’m teaching more contemporary novels, I’m more thoughtful and engaged in my teaching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a few rounds of young adult units, I’ve discovered some awesome benefits to teaching this genre. So, here are the reasons I have found to love teaching young adult literature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n