Creative English Teacher — Five Reasons To Teach Series

Five Reasons for Teaching Beowulf

September 15, 2018 • British Literature • Five Reasons To Teach Series • World Literature

Five Reasons for Teaching Beowulf I can still remember the first time I heard someone read Old English aloud. The words had a hypnotic sound to them like a druid casting a spell. Of course, this druid was Dr. Ellis, my Hawaiian-shirt-wearing English professor. I couldn’t believe that what I was hearing was actually English or at least “pre-English.” I later learned that Dr. Ellis was so knowledgeable in linguistics that the Merriam-Webster folks (of dictionary fame) would send him whole sections of the dictionary to double-check for accuracy. Throughout that semester Dr. Ellis taught us how to conjugate Old English verbs...

Five Reasons for Teaching the Epic of Gilgamesh

April 16, 2018 • Five Reasons To Teach Series • World Literature

Ancient cultures, obscure deities, hard-to-pronounce names are enough to deter almost any teacher, yet even though The Epic of Gilgamesh presents many challenges, it is also a great teaching tool. In addition to qualifying as the oldest work of literature in the world, the epic is a rousing adventure that presents a valuable lesson about life and death.

Five Reasons For Teaching The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

January 15, 2018 • American Literature • Five Reasons To Teach Series

Although I hate to admit it, some novels are almost unreadable. It's not that you can't read them; it's just that as you do read them, you lose the will to read further. The Last of the Mohicans was always one of these books for me. The description is so overbearing and the plot so seemingly thin that I never could muster enough resolve to finish it. Yet when I pushed through, I found one of America's first great adventure stories and the birth of an American archetype.

Five Reasons For Teaching The Scarlet Letter

October 16, 2017 • American Literature • Five Reasons To Teach Series

The Scarlet Letter is unquestioningly a pillar of American Literature (some argue the greatest American novel), but what does it have to offer young adult readers? Apart from peeling back layer after layer of symbolism, is there worth in making this novel required reading? There are very few books that I remember enjoying from my own high-school experience--no fault of my teachers but my own--and The Scarlet Letter was one of them. Nothing about the premise of the novel drew me to the story: Puritans and unwed mothers are not the primarily interests of...