English is the only class that students are required to take every year, and a defining part of every education are the books students must read for their classes. Although both The New York Times and The Atlantic have published articles in the past few years about high schools leaning away from teaching full novels, Oakland Tech teachers are just as passionate as ever when it comes to sharing their favorite books with their students.
“For college prep, I like to teach As I Lay Dying, because it’s a really challenging novel to understand,” explains Jeremy Sutton, an 11th grade English teacher. He wants students to learn how to interpret complex texts and analyze characters more deeply, “like a psychologist,” to fully understand them through this novel.
Kathleen Bailey, the Head of the Health Academy, teaches English classes to both 10th and 11th graders. Her favorite book to teach her sophomore class is Fahrenheit 451, a staple of many a high school curriculum.
“It’s an interesting book and it’s always relevant,” says Bailey. For her 10th grade classes, she likes to teach novels that are more self-explanatory, with themes that are clearly stated.
“By 11th grade, they are ready for a bit more of an allegory,” she believes.
The book Bailey is most excited to teach her 11th grade class this year is actually a play: The Crucible. She finds that many of the ideas that the play discusses are very helpful for when students take American Government as seniors the following year.
“It explains why the government controls people’s bodies, especially women,” Bailey describes, also including that it feels especially relevant in the current political climate, with “one group turning on the other.”
Bailey is not the only teacher who likes to incorporate lessons about government into her curriculum. Amanda LaBerge, who teaches both English classes and Policy and Advocacy, likes to have this kind of focus as well. Her students are part of the Race, Policy, and Law Pathway, and it is important that the books she teaches for English are also relevant to the ideas in Policy and Advocacy.
She wants students to think about “how narrative can be used as a policy organizing tool to humanize immigrants’ experiences and gain support for specific policy goals.”
LaBerge’s favorite book to teach her classes is Sula, by Toni Morrison.
“Morrison is just a genius writer and beacon of artistic and ethical light that no one touches,” LaBerge comments.
While most English teachers at Oakland Tech get to incorporate books of their choosing into their curriculums, “Ninth grade tends to follow the same curriculum,” says Lara Kuan Haller, a 9th grade English and Ethnic Studies teacher. “It is the same district mandate.”
The curriculum freshmen teachers follow was created by the company Fishtank Learning, which uses a combination of short stories, novels, and plays; a variety that Kuan Haller thinks that students appreciate. Fishtank has curriculums that districts can use for each grade level individually, but only one of the books that the district mandates students read is intended for ninth grade level: Born a Crime, a memoir by Trevor Noah. The other two books, American Born Chinese, a graphic novel, and A Raisin in the Sun, which is a play, are part of the seventh grade Fishtank curriculum.
“I would want to choose texts that are important for students at this age to study,” explains Kuan Haller, meaning she wished that they would teach a classic, like Of Mice and Men.
Teachers in other grades, who can alter their curriculum, find inspiration in the literature their students are passionate about and interested in.
“I will try to interview my students for what they are reading,” describes Sutton, while explaining how he makes decisions when it comes to new additions to his class reading list.
Bailey has noticed that many students have become more interested in reading since the student center was rebranded as the school library.
“It’s made more students feel like readers,” she says, and that is really exciting to her.