Revitalizing High School Reading Programs: Diversifying Book Selections for Engaged Learning

Read and write for pleasure.

For the past three years, I’ve had the honor of leading the summer reading program at my school. This experience has provided valuable insights into creating engaging and educational reading experiences for teenagers during the summer. Additionally, I’ve developed reading programs for winter breaks and fostered independent reading to expose my students to a wide variety of books.

My journey began with the recognition that all texts, whether from textbooks or prescribed curricula, have their own historical and cultural significance. While I enjoy teaching classics like “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “The Pearl” by John Steinbeck, or “The Great Gatsby,” I’ve discovered that a wealth of rich, layered texts can open students’ eyes to different perspectives.

For instance, this year I taught “Upstate” by Kalisha Buckhanon, a contemporary author. The novel explores the lives of a young couple in Harlem, with the male protagonist being wrongfully accused and imprisoned. The narrative unfolds through their exchanged letters over several years. My students found this an enlightening experience, leading to discussions on love, personal transformation, and social issues.

Moreover, I’ve been inspired by the work of Gholdy Muhammad, who emphasizes the need for literature to represent diverse identities and intellects. Such texts can challenge ingrained beliefs or ask probing questions. An example is Octavia E. Butler’s “Kindred,” a novel I taught this year. To my delight, one of my students informed me that a TV series based on the book has aired on HBO, demonstrating its contemporary relevance.

Through these experiences, I’ve learned about the historical context of high school reading lists and explored strategies, tips, and theories to expand literacy. I’m excited to bring this knowledge and experience into the 2023-2024 academic year.

Let me know what books you love to read with adolescent learners, either for pleasure, as an anchor or mentor text, or for independent reading.

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Why I Love TikTok Content Creators (And So Should You) — And a List of Zany TikToks I Found

I have a penchant for the theatrical. 

The dime novel. The beauty in the absurd. The homemade movie. The guy with the camera turned on himself. The take-a-household-item-and-make-a-prop kind of performativity. 

You get the gist.

And where can you find the most beautiful schlock the Internet has ever created? Why go no further than TikTok. It's a platform where content creators put their own identities front and center — and it's a highly satisfying romp.

If you didn't know — TikTok is a mobile video app owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. The first iteration of the app was dubbed Musical.ly, authored by software Engineers Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang. Basically, the app began as a lip syncing app called Musical.ly and its companion live streaming app called live.ly. TikTok was a rebrand of the app that attempted to fold both features of the two social apps into one.

And the rest is history. 

Just as Twitter revolutionized the short writing form of 265 characters, TikTok has ushered in the micro-length video form of 15 to 30 seconds.

The draw of TikTok is twofold — it’s easy to use and to create content with, coupled with its immense sound and music library and its unending filter library. However, the best TikToks have neither — they’re pure spun dioramas of peoples constructed private lives. And it’s why I first was enamored of the platform — peering into people’s live created in a dizzying array of quick action theater of the absurd. 

Here are some gems I’ve collected along the way. 

1. The Smiling, Waving Homage to The Sitcom Montage

This teen has an instinctual appreciation for the visual grammar of the iconic television sitcom montage — ignore the silly tune — and pay attention to how his edits match perfectly something out of American television classics Growing Pains or Family Ties.

2. Antoinette's Casual Use of the Cigarette

It’s easy to dismiss @antoniteegrams because her videos are riffs on soundbytes. But she’s so humble in her mien and I love her casual use of the cigarette. I have no idea what the original source of the soundbyte is but that’s what makes TikTok endearing. Any random noise can be strewn into actor’s gold. Andy Warhol was partly right — in the future everyone will be famous — but not just for five minutes, but for as long as you have working Internet and a smartphone with a halfway decent camera.

3. The Family Dinner Table is Often a Suitable Mise-en-Scene

@eddiepdoyle videos his grandmother’s acerbic comebacks in dozens of video. TikTok has made many folks Internet famous because a cousin, or grandson, or daughter, or someone, picked up a camera and started candidly filming a family member. The immediacy of the moment is right at your fingertips, as if you’ve stumbled into this woman’s cluttered kitchen and she wants to know what you want from her. Classic.

4. A Colorful Edit

It’s possible that this edit is rather basic. But it's relatively early TikTok. I like the use of color and fashion and the sheer fact that the guy is having a lot of fun. And that's quite a mess for one less-than-thirty-second video.

5. Boys Wear Tee-Shirts on Their Heads When They Play a Girl

So teenage boys on TikTok will don a tee-shirt on their head when they're playing a female role. It's sheer schlock. But a testament to the fact that no TikTok star has a wardrobe warehouse or access to MGM studios. Although, it is odd that teenage boys think a woman's hair is well represented by donning a tee on their head. Oh, girl!

6. Sissy That Walk!

If you can't get on the runway, girl you better werk. So does this amazing runway walk that is probably this TikToker's backyard. Sissy that walk!

7. The Five Minute Bathroom Break 

TikTok lends a view into working class jobs — fast food attendants, nail salonists, customer service representatives, and the lot. One thing network television cannot do — even though it has tried with shows like All in the Family and Roseanne — is replicate the experience of an everyday American's day at work. And often that means taking a five minute bathroom break and talking to the mirror. Period.

8. Right?!

I am not sure what to think of this video. Brilliant? Yes.

9. The Smiling Boy

This boy has created an entire fandom over the fact that he is a teenager who enjoys smiling.

10. The Histrionic School Lunch Lady Performance

Again put a piece of fabric on your head and all of a sudden you are a woman. And I wouldn't even call this drag. I call it histrionic performativity. And I didn't steal that from Judith Butler.

11. It's Got To Be the Sweater

It could be ironic that this guy is wearing a Playboy sweater. Right?! Multiple Tik-Toks are created by people, mostly teenagers, who are bored. And lots of TikTokers were born out of the Covid-19 pandemic.

12. The Best Comedian is Probably Your Neighbor, Mr. Pickles

Again — the beauty of TikTok is that it creates stars out of ordinary people. I love this guy's vulnerability and authenticity all packaged into a nice, yellowy-orangey color scheme.

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Short Story: "Secret Incognito" (A Piece of Stones of Erasmus Juvenilia)

"Secret Incognito" is a short story by Greig Roselli (© 1996)

A YOUNG BOY DECIDED TO ENTER A FIELD.

Stone monoliths soared into the sky with shards of rusty metal and broken glass beneath.  The enigmatic structures beckoned the lad; the eight slabs of concrete called to him.  Stains of derision from his family clung.  He climbed the fence (which had a clearly visible sign stenciled in red: “NO TRESPASSING!”) to escape for a while. He penetrated quickly to elude the threatening noise of the close traffic. With quick steps, he had already entered the depths, but he wasn’t afraid. Rusted metal, a browned apple core, and aluminum scraps riddled the bare, gaseous earth. Thorn laden brambles engulfed the concrete slabs. A can of Moxie lay entrapped in one of its clutches. Concealed in the twisting vine one could find secrets and lost memories. All of a sudden it seemed an adventure to explore this vast void, to maybe find a truth. A way to prove to himself there was more to life than bitterness and homework. The collected, curly-headed youth looked upward: tall monuments to fallen bridges that once traversed mighty waters stood before him. Huge pieces of masonry, stacked one on top of another, looked enticingly climbable. He scaled it with much agility, using the large rusty appendages as an aid. A bead of sweat etched its way across the boy’s face: the first sign of effort, true gusto, true vigor.

Movie Review: In Juno (2007) Jason Reitman Attempts to Make Us Feel Genuine Emotion

Juno
(starring Ellen Page and Michael Cera)

Maybe it was director Jason Reitman's sleight of hand that actually got to me rather than genuine sentiment, but I have begun to distrust how a film makes me feel. I have acquired an impervious lamella toward film; I had seen Juno back in 2007 and found this review that I had never posted. Literature to me has become false emotional catharsis (probably comes from reading way too much film theory) but it probably actually has more to do with the fact that most films really SUCK at pulling off true human emotion. Probably the last great American movie of genuine, gut-wrench sentiment was Ordinary People. But, for the most part, American movies are saccharine sweet and two-dimensional.

After that scathing report on American Cinema, I will not actually talk about Juno
I have to admit, though, the first ten minutes did not reel me in as I thought it would, based on the Ebert review I did in fact read. The film too much reminded me of Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tennenbaums, that I was afraid that the film would never rise about the artifice of clever dialogue and impeccable mise-en-scene. A Wes Anderson flick is so obsessive compulsive in set design, that it is as if the props were meant to be fetishistic totems rather than set pieces.

Jennifer Garner's character Vanessa aspires to be the mother
of the child of a pregnant teenager (played by Ellen Page) 

I thought I was getting way too deep into the Anderson kitsch with this film, especially when the titular character (Ellen Page), a newly impregnated teen, her adolescent tummy bulging deliberately to smack the viewer in the face, chugs a cheery load of Sunny D and lashes out smart-ass comebacks to the convenience store clerk (a great cameo by Rainn Wilson). Wilson spouts out snappy one-liners when the knocked-up teen shows up to buy a home pregnancy test: “That ain't no Etch-A-Sketch. This is one doodle that can't be un-did, Homeskillet. ” Those lines alone should be placed on the Hollywood walk of fame or something.
Not to ruin anything, there are no spoilers here, but I thought the most affecting scene in the entire film is Jennifer Garner, the would-be mother, placing her head to Juno’s belly to hear the baby move. That to me made the film. Oh, if every film had such a moment of sheer beauty, I will want to embrace cinema again and perhaps re-love catharsis.

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