How I Teach Critical Lenses So Students Actually Use Them

June 30, 2026 Dana Huff Leave a comment

Students finish reading a chapter and ask:

“What does it mean?”

“What’s the right interpretation?”

Many students see literary analysis as guessing what the teacher is thinking.

The problem wasn’t that my students couldn’t think deeply. They didn’t yet have a framework for asking productive questions.

Like many teachers, I started with existing critical theory resources. They were academically accurate, but I found they didn’t give high school students enough guidance or help them understand why the lenses mattered in the first place.

Critical lenses aren’t about memorizing theory. They’re about learning different ways to approach a text.

Critical lenses don’t change the text—they change what we notice.

Different readers naturally notice different things in a text. We all bring our experiences, beliefs, biases, and identities to what we read. However, trying on different critical lenses allows us to develop stronger interpretations and more valuable insights. More importantly, they help us develop empathy and understanding for others. That’s one of the reasons I believe critical lenses belong in every English classroom, not just AP Literature.

Students need to see a model for how to read using critical lenses. They benefit from a common text, ideally something short that everyone is reading together and that invites a variety of interpretations. I used to use The Great Gatsby because students typically read it the year before AP Literature, and they are mostly familiar with it. However, I discovered that not all my students read it, and not all the students who had remembered it could recall it well enough. Once I realized students needed to experience critical lenses before defining them, I stopped looking for a text and started looking for a common experience.

Enter American Gothic.

Image of the painting American Gothic by Grant Wood depicting a balding male farmer holding a pitchfork and wearing overalls and a jacket with a woman in a red print apron, wearing a cameo, and her hair is pulled back. They stand in front of a farmhouse with a gothic window.

Instead of beginning with literary theory, I begin with one familiar image.

Most students are familiar with this painting, but they don’t even have to have seen it before for this activity to work. I essentially take students through each of the critical lenses I’ve found most helpful and ask them questions about what they see through each lens. If students are stuck, I might guide them to notice a few things. For example, when using a Feminist Lens, I might suggest the figures’ placement and clothing reveal something about their gender roles. When using an Ecocritical Lens, I might suggest the only nature visible is a set of manicured trees, relegated to the periphery of the canvas.

Students look at the same painting repeatedly. Only the questions change. The image stays the same. That’s when they realize what a critical lens actually is: a different way of seeing the text.

Every year, there’s a moment when the room changes. For my students, it often happens during the Queer Theory example. They suddenly realize that the painting hasn’t changed—their thinking has. More specifically, the questions they’re asking have changed.

After I hit upon this method for teaching critical lenses, I guide students through

learning individual lenses
to choosing a lens
to comparing lenses
to combining lenses
to writing through a lens

As a result, their analysis was sharper. One student shared that she wished she had learned critical lenses years ago. She said, “It would have saved me so much time getting started with a literary analysis!”

After years of refining this sequence in my own classroom, I finally organized it into a complete Critical Lenses curriculum. It includes the modeling lesson, teacher guide, student handouts, application activities, and planning tools I use to help students become more thoughtful, independent literary readers. If you’re looking for a way to help students move beyond plot summary and begin asking richer questions about literature, I hope this resource helps your students experience the same “aha!” moment mine do every year.

This site and resource are not affiliated with or endorsed by the College Board.

Teaching Literature

Teaching Students to Read What’s Unsaid in Never Let Me Go

June 25, 2026 Dana Huff Leave a comment

casette tape with tape pulled out and looped in a pile — Photo by Etienne Girardet

One of the biggest challenges of teaching Never Let Me Go isn’t helping students understand the plot. The plot is fairly straightforward. Students tend to have more difficulty understanding how to read the novel.

Many students approach the book as if it were a mystery. They spend the first half asking, “What’s really going on?” and become frustrated by the unanswered questions. While curiosity is part of Ishiguro’s design, it’s not the novel’s primary challenge.

The real challenge is learning to read Kathy’s narration, which makes it perfect for teaching the AP® Lit CED skills on narration:

4. A Identifyanddescribe the narrator or speaker of a text.
4. B Identifyandexplain the function of point of view in a narrative.
4. C Identifyanddescribe details, diction, or syntax in a text that reveal a narrator’s or speaker’s perspective.
4. D Explainhowa narrator’sreliabilityaffects a narrative.

Students often assume that if a narrator leaves things out, they’re being deceptive. Kathy isn’t lying to readers. Instead, she remembers selectively, revisits events with new understanding, and tells her story through the imperfect lens of memory.

That distinction changes everything.

Instead of asking “what happened?”, students begin asking:

Why does Kathy remember this?
What doesn’t she fully understand?
What is Ishiguro asking readers to infer?

Once I realized this, I stopped organizing my unit around plot developments and started organizing it around interpretive moves.

Each lesson asks students to practice a different way of reading:

noticing what is withheld
examining how memory shapes meaning
investigating emotional subtext
tracing patterns of delayed revelation
building literary arguments from inference rather than summary

The goal becomes helping students learn how to read the novel rather than simply finish it.

When students begin reading Kathy’s narration instead of chasing answers, they notice that the novel’s emotional power doesn’t come from surprising revelations.

It comes from the gradual realization that readers, like Kathy herself, have been living with an incomplete understanding all along.

That’s a much richer reading experience, and it leads to more thoughtful discussions and stronger analytical writing.

That shift in my thinking became the foundation for my inquiry-based Never Let Me Go unit.

The resource includes seven lessons built around narration, memory, identity, structure, and ethical inquiry, along with original activities, writing instruction, Socratic seminar materials, quizzes, and teacher resources designed for AP Literature, IB Literature, and advanced high school English courses.

If you’re looking for a unit that helps students move beyond plot summary and into genuine literary interpretation, I hope you’ll find it useful.

This site and resource are not affiliated with or endorsed by the College Board.

Teaching Writing

Timed Writing Without Panic: Helping Students Write Better Essays Under Pressure

April 9, 2026 Dana Huff Leave a comment

Student writing — Photo by Wadi Lissa on Unsplash

This is the point in the year when AP teachers look at the calendar and panic a little, particularly if our students are still freezing when they see the prompt or defaulting to formulaic, shallow essays.

We teach students five-paragraph essays and encourage them to hunt for devices, which leads students to focus on what they should include rather than what they should argue. Timed writing becomes performance rather than an opportunity to show thinking.

Timed writing is not just about speed, although students do need to learn how to start the writing task quickly. It’s also not just about structure, though students need to learn to organize their ideas. Timed writing is about understanding the prompt, making an argument, and developing ideas under pressure.

When I teach my students how to approach timed writing, I encourage them to slow down at the start. Students often rush into writing without fully understanding the prompt or taking time to plan (and they pay for it later). Taking even a few minutes to annotate the prompt and sketch out a plan leads to stronger, more focused essays.

I teach my students to focus on a line of reasoning. Instead of listing literary devices, they should be building an argument about how those choices work together to create meaning. The shift from identifying to analyzing is often what makes the biggest difference in their writing.

I make reflection part of the process. I ask students to assess their work using the AP rubric. Reflection helps students improve over time as they begin to see patterns and set goals to address areas for improvement. The eventual goal is for students to have a clear idea of how they performed on the AP exam.

When I schedule a timed writing practice, I begin by encouraging students to break down the prompt. I offer a 10-minute reading period to annotate the prompt and plan quickly before setting the timer. I find this helpful since students will have some reading time on the actual exam, and it also reduces panic, as students can calmly dive into the passage and prompt.

A simple checklist can help students feel more in control of the process and more confident that they are meeting expectations.

Reflecting on the process and product helps students identify areas to target for improvement and gives them a sense of how they are preparing for the exam.

Over time, I’ve been looking for ways to make this process more consistent and manageable (for my students and for me). I recently put together a set of tools that support this approach.

The Timed Writing Toolkit includes:

a prompt breakdown guide
a planning template
a writing checklist
a reflection sheet

The toolkit is designed to help students approach timed writing with clarity and purpose, without relying on rigid formulas. It can be used repeatedly, so students begin to internalize the process over time.

Whether you use these exact tools or not, shifting the focus from formula to thinking can make a real difference in how students approach timed writing and in the quality of the writing they produce.

Assessment, Reflection

Why I Stopped Grading Participation (and What I Do Instead)

March 29, 2026 Dana Huff Leave a comment

One of the most disheartening moments in teaching is asking a question, seeing a hand go up, and hearing, “Can I go to the bathroom?” We’ve all experienced discussions that fall flat—questions met with silence or, just as often, the same few students carrying the conversation while everyone else listens. Even when those students have insightful things to say, discussion can start to feel less like inquiry and more like performance.

I was really excited when I first heard about Socratic seminars. At first, I used them occasionally because I wasn’t sure students could sustain a full period of discussion. After a few successful attempts, I began integrating seminars more regularly into my teaching. At the time, I assessed student learning primarily through participation grades.

Over time, I noticed that students seemed to compete to participate, and they didn’t try to invite quieter students into the conversation. Discussion became more about how much students could say than what they might learn. I started to realize that the problem was how I was structuring—and grading—discussion.

Grading participation didn’t work for me because I wasn’t measuring what students were really learning. Instead, it rewarded students who were louder, more confident, or quicker to respond. Students who were quieter, multilingual learners, and those who needed more time to process were often left out.

I started thinking about the rubric I was using. One section focused on a written reflection students completed after the seminar. I enjoyed reading these reflections because they revealed a great deal about what students were learning. I realized how much intellectual work listening really was, and students who were quieter during discussion often shared the most insightful explanations of how the seminar influenced their thinking.

What if the whole grade focused on the reflection? What if, instead of grading how often students spoke, I focused on how they were thinking?

I decided to rethink how I assessed Socratic seminars. Before a seminar discussion, I use the Question Formulation Technique to help students create questions for the discussion. Students plan for the seminar by taking notes on their initial thinking about the question and gathering evidence.

On the day of a seminar, I give students a few minutes to gather their thoughts, look over their notes, and mentally prepare. Then the students lead their discussion. Inevitably, they find a rhythm and share facilitation duties. I track the students’ discussion using Equity Maps. I rarely intervene; I don’t even look directly at students during discussion, because they tend to start talking to me instead of each other.

After the discussion, I assign the reflection, which is typically due the next class period. Students focus on key ideas raised in the seminar, their responses to peers’ comments, and how their thinking changed.

When I stopped grading participation and started grading reflection, seminars changed. The seminars encouraged deeper thinking and made space for more voices. Students shared that they felt less pressure and were able to be more fully present and listen because they were not worried about making enough comments. They no longer had to perform participation. Instead, they just did it. The discussions felt more meaningful.

A few years back, I had a really interesting discussion about grading participation with a class after two students advocated for a participation grade. They were both very comfortable in discussion and high performers. In the conversation that followed, they realized that all the other students preferred being graded on their reflections. As one student shared, “I don’t see why we should get a grade for something that is just expected.” In the next seminar, the two students advocating for a participation grade opted to listen rather than speak. Both of them shared in their reflections that being quiet felt awful. What a learning experience! And they never would have learned it had they not been free to take that risk.

You might be thinking that if you don’t grade participation, students won’t participate. I understand that concern, but there are several ways to support engagement. Start by giving students space to generate their own questions. Tools like the QFT help students invest in discussion because their questions are centered.

Reassure students that a few moments of silence mean people are thinking. Students (and teachers) are often uncomfortable with silence, but if you wait, students will find their way back into the discussion.

I have also found that students are invested in seeing their feedback from Equity Maps, so I share parts of the discussion report that Equity Maps generates. They find it really interesting to see how the discussion flowed, and I always show them their equity quotient, the number of speakers relative to how much each person speaks. Inevitably, students want to see that equity score go up. Last year, a student even talked me into giving the class a pizza party if their equity score rose to the highest tier. While I didn’t wind up having to pay for pizza, I would have been happy to—either way, the students were focused on ensuring all voices were valued.

In addition to using Equity Maps and the QFT, I started using other tools to support this approach to seminars—graphic organizers for students and reflection prompts in an easy-to-replicate template.

If you’re interested, I’ve put those materials together into a Socratic Seminar toolkit you can use or adapt in your own classroom. The toolkit includes discussion structures (full-class, fishbowl, and small-group), student prep and reflection tools, a simple tracking system, and a rubric focused on thinking rather than participation. You can take a look here if it’s useful.

Seminars feel completely different now that I focus on thinking instead of participation. Students are still engaged, but they leave more space for quieter voices and have become more comfortable letting the discussion breathe. Their reflections show how much they value the learning happening in discussion.

A few months ago, a student told me seminars were her favorite part of class—and that she especially liked listening to others’ ideas. Recently, after a discussion, one student simply said, “That was fire.”

Teaching Literature

TPCASTT, 15 Years Later: What I’d Keep, Change, and Add

March 22, 2026 Dana Huff Leave a comment

A collection of books on a table with a sign that says "Poetry." — Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

I first heard about TPCASTT from Lisa Huff and shared the resource on my blog 15 years ago. It works really well for giving students a starting place for analyzing poetry. It helped me solve a problem I was having when teaching poetry: how do students start analyzing poetry?

I’m still using TPCASTT in my classroom all these years later. However, I’m not using it in quite the same way.

TPCASTT reduces anxiety for students who feel intimidated by poetry. It forces students to read closely and re-read, which is essential for poetry. Students need to contemplate the poem’s title. They need to synthesize their learning. It builds analytical habits that move students beyond summarizing the text. If a student has no entry point into a poem, TPCASTT still provides one of the most reliable scaffolds I know.

However, in the years I’ve used TPCASTT, I’ve uncovered some limitations. It can become mechanical; students may go through the steps in the formula without really thinking. It can also emphasize completion over insight. Students might arrive at interesting ideas, but feel compelled to fill in every part of the worksheet rather than pursue those ideas further.

Students sometimes delay thinking about the poem until they’ve gone through all the steps, which can get in the way of genuine interpretation. Over time, I realized some students were analyzing poems without actually experiencing them.

Students also get stuck on some of the steps. For example, paraphrasing can trip students up. While I understand the rationale, I often encourage students to summarize instead—focusing on what’s essential rather than translating line by line. “Connotation” encourages students to look beyond the literal, but it’s not always the most accessible term for what I want them to do: examine figurative language and layers of meaning. I’ve seen some teachers adapt the acronym (for example, TPFASTT) to reflect that shift.

TPCASTT can also result in formulaic statements about theme (“The theme is that…”), often without much depth. Occasionally, students even reference the tool itself in their writing, which defeats the purpose. The goal is for TPCASTT to support analysis, not become the analysis.

Another challenge is that not all poems fit neatly into the structure. Students sometimes try to shoehorn a poem into the formula rather than using the formula to better understand the poem.

Because of these limitations, I’ve made a few shifts in how I use TPCASTT.

The first shift was making it optional rather than mandatory. I introduce it as one of several tools for analyzing poetry. I emphasize that if it’s getting in the way, students can adapt it or try a different approach. That said, it remains especially helpful for students who are newer to poetry or who feel stuck.

Another shift is that I don’t start with TPCASTT. Instead, we read the poem—often more than once. I begin with open-ended questions like “What do you notice?” and “What do you wonder?” The first reading is about experiencing the poem: noticing patterns, reacting, and annotating. If we use TPCASTT, it comes after that initial engagement, not before.

I also encourage students to compress or combine steps. Students sometimes assume each step should become a paragraph in an essay, which leads to formulaic writing. In reality, some steps naturally belong together. For example, title and theme often connect, and what TPCASTT calls “connotation” and “attitude” can merge into a discussion of tone and meaning.

I prioritize discussion over completion. Rather than focusing on filling out a worksheet, we spend more time asking questions like, “Where do you see a shift?” or “What feels different here?” or “What is the speaker really wrestling with?” These questions tend to generate more meaningful analysis than completing each step in order.

Over time, I’ve also added a few elements that TPCASTT doesn’t explicitly address. I try to build in more space for students to generate their own questions about a poem. I encourage multiple interpretations rather than pushing toward a single “correct” theme. We talk more about why a poem matters—what it says about human experience and why it might still resonate.

Sometimes, that also means reading the poem aloud, more than once, and paying attention to how it sounds. Tone, rhythm, and meaning often emerge more clearly when students hear the poem rather than just see it on the page.

After all these years, I still find TPCASTT useful. It’s a strong starting point, especially for students who need structure. But I’m less interested now in whether students can “do TPCASTT” correctly and more interested in whether they can sit with a poem long enough to make meaning from it.

TPCASTT helped my students—and me—learn how to begin. Fifteen years later, I think of it as one way in, not the way in.

If you still use TPCASTT, I’d love to hear how your approach has evolved.

Feel free to download this TPCASTT Reimagined handout for use with your students.

Teaching Literature

How I Teach Structure in Mrs. Dalloway (Not Just Stream of Consciousness)

March 18, 2026 Dana Huff Leave a comment

Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith from Mrs. Dalloway rendered in a cubist style Believe it or not, Mrs. Dalloway might be one of my favorite books to teach. It definitely presents many challenges. It doesn’t divide neatly into chapters. It’s non-linear. It’s written in a stream of consciousness. Students struggle with it. Honestly, many teachers struggle with it! Common approaches, such as teaching the traditional plot arc (Freytag’s Pyramid) or teaching character development, simply don’t work with Mrs. Dalloway. The real difficulty students face when reading this novel is that they don’t understand its structure. The problem isn’t that students can’t read Mrs. Dalloway. It’s that they don’t yet know how to read a novel that isn’t built like a novel they’ve seen before.

The key move for me was to approach the novel’s structure rather than teach its style. While Woolf is experimenting stylistically in this novel, she’s doing much more than trying out stream of consciousness. She is playing with time and perspective. Characters’ thoughts turn to the past and move back to the present as seamlessly as our own. She follows the thoughts of several characters all at once. Moments that take place over seconds are stretched across pages. She juxtaposes the past and the present, characters, and events. Patterns reveal themselves. Once students see the structure, the novel becomes readable.

I approach teaching Mrs. Dalloway with three strands: Time and the Persistence of Memory; Sanity, Illness, and Social Authority; and Social Performance and Private Identity. These strands converge at the novel’s end when Clarissa learns of Septimus’s death at her party.

Time and the Persistence of Memory approaches the chiming of Big Ben as structure, not simply background. Memory consistently interrupts the present, as Clarissa thinks about her kiss with Sally and her days at Bourton. Time is pressure, not just a sequence of moments.

Sanity, Illness, and Social Authority focuses on teaching Septimus’s story not as a side plot but as a critical element of the story. In Septimus’s arc, institutions, represented by Dr. Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw, define “normal” and exert their authority. The language of authority matters: Bradshaw controls his patients through Proportion and Conversion.

Social Performance and Private Identity examines Clarissa’s performance at her party. It focuses on how she appears publicly, in contrast to her private thoughts, and treats the party as the novel’s structural convergence.

These strands give students a way to track patterns throughout the novel rather than reading it as a series of disconnected moments. They begin to see how Woolf builds meaning structurally rather than through plot.

One example lesson I teach introduces students to Woolf’s use of time as a structural force rather than a background detail through a close reading of the introduction of Big Ben’s chimes, a motif that runs through the novel.

First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air.

Students take apart the first sentence. What do these two parts suggest about time? Why construct the sentence in two parts? I play the Westminster chimes of Big Ben for students and ask them what it might be like to hear those chimes marking every hour of your life. Students invariably notice the pressure that time exerts when marked in this way, but also, there is a collective experience—time is a shared experience. Structurally, the sentence also prepares students for how to read this novel as a whole. I guide students to pay attention to the semicolon, acting as a hinge.

Students then analyze the novel’s beginning in small groups. They track how Woolf moves in and out of Clarissa’s mind, identifying where those shifts occur, what triggers them, and what changes as a result. It’s important to affirm that students do not need to be right; they just need to notice the structural movement.

As a class, we examine the Trigger → Shift → Effect pattern as a way of tracking how Woolf moves between consciousnesses. We discuss patterns, noting external triggers (such as sounds, movements, memory cues) and how they lead to an internal shift. Then we discuss the emotional or temporal effect of that shift.

I guide students to notice that time does not move linearly, and they reflect on how Woolf’s description of Big Ben suggests that time exerts pressure on characters.

When I approach the novel through structural focus, students stop asking “What is happening?” and start to notice “Why is Woolf structuring the novel this way?” Students can grasp concepts such as structure, meaning, and complexity with this focus.

When I first taught this novel, I didn’t know how to approach it and resorted to cobbling lessons together based on a few things I could find online. Over time, I realized I needed a more coherent way to teach the novel—not just a series of lessons, but a structure that helped students build understanding across the unit. I ended up building a full unit organized around these ideas, including lesson plans, slides, and multiple assessment pathways.

My full Mrs. Dalloway unit includes lesson plans, slides, and assessments built around this structure.

Teaching this novel matters, even in an age when students increasingly struggle to focus and are losing reading stamina. Students deserve opportunities to meaningfully experience difficult reading. Understanding structure is a skill they can transfer to other reading—and other complex texts. It’s worthwhile: when this novel hits, it cracks open new worlds for students.

Assessment, Teaching Literature

Setting in Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing

December 22, 2025 Dana Huff Leave a comment

Homegoing

In reviewing feedback on my students’ AP Literature* exam scores, I observed that they scored lower on the skills connected to explaining the function of setting. I use Yaa Gyasi’s novel Homegoing to teach these skills:

- 2.A: Identify and describe specific textual details that convey or reveal a setting.
- 2.B: Explain the function of setting in a narrative.
- 2.C: Describe the relationship between a character and a setting.

Homegoing is a perfect text for teaching the function of a setting because of the overwhelming influence setting has on the characters. I typically teach this book with a discussion-heavy approach, which works well when you have classes that love discussion. I currently have a great class that loves to discuss the literature we are reading; however, I’m also approaching my teaching in general with more small-group activities designed to engage students in the text. I created a setting-based activity I plan to use in teaching Homegoing this year. It’s called “Setting as Shaper.”

As students read, they will annotate or collect 4–6 specific setting details, then sort them into categories:

Physical environment (landscape, buildings, climate, geography)
Social structures (laws, customs, power systems, economics)
Historical moment (era-specific realities shaping daily life)
Psychological atmosphere (fear, safety, confinement, belonging)

When they annotate, quote, or paraphrase the detail, they should identify where it appears and label the category.

After each reading, students will convene with a small group in class and discuss their observations. The group will select two setting details and answer: “What is the setting doing to the character in this chapter?”

Students will either choose from the following list or add your own idea:

Restricting choices
Enabling survival or resistance
Reinforcing power hierarchies
Shaping identity or self-perception
Creating generational trauma
Offering false or fragile safety
Forcing moral compromise

After their discussion, they will write a 1-2 sentence claim about the setting in the chapter: In this chapter, the setting functions to ________, which shapes ________.

I am also going to have students create concept maps for each chapter. For Effia’s chapter, students will create a Belonging Map (see details below). The guiding questions for this particular chapter: Where does Effia belong? And where is she erased?

Effia’s chapter is fundamentally about conditional belonging. The Cape Coast Castle is simultaneously:

a site of privilege and protection
a site of moral erasure and violence

This map helps students analyze:

how Effia belongs only by ignoring certain spaces
how physical proximity does not equal moral or emotional access

Instructions for the Belonging Map:

Draw concentric circles:
1. Inner = belonging
2. Middle = conditional belonging
3. Outer = exclusion or danger
Place locations, naming:
1. Who grants or denies belonging?
2. What is the cost of belonging?
Unpack belonging maps together as a class.

Maps in Homegoing

Chapter Type	Map	Applicable Chapters
Confinement / institutional	Pressure Map	“Esi,” “Ness,” “H”
Movement / transition	Before–Inside–After	“Kojo,” “Abena,” “Yaw,” “Marcus”
Moral compromise	Moral Geography	“Akua,” “Sonny”
Identity & displacement	Belonging Map	“Effia,” “Willie,” “Marjorie”
Power systems	Agency Spectrum	“Quey,” “James”

Below, you can find some instructions for using these different concept maps:

Map Type	Core Question(s)	How to Create	Annotations	Analytical Payoff	Best Used When	Other
Agency Spectrum Map Focus: Power, choice, and limitation across different spaces	Where does the character have agency? Where is that agency limited or illusory?	Draw a horizontal line across your page. Label the left end: Little or No Agency. Label the right end: High Agency / Control. Identify 3–5 key locations from the chapter. Place each location along the line based on how much control the character has in that space.	What choices are available to the character here What choices are denied One brief textual detail that supports your placement	This map shows that agency is uneven and often depends on setting, not personality.	Characters move between spaces Power feels partial or unstable The setting offers freedom that may not be real
Pressure Map (Setting as Force) Focus: How the environment exerts control over the character	What pressures does the setting apply, and how do they shape the character’s behavior or survival?	Write the character’s name in the center of the page. Draw arrows pointing toward the character. Each arrow represents a pressure created by the setting. Write 2–3 outcomes such as: Loss of agency Adaptation or withdrawal Survival strategies Identity erosion or fragmentation	One specific setting detail A brief note explaining its effect on the character	This map treats setting as an active force, not background.	Characters are confined or controlled Institutions dominate the chapter Action is limited by environment	Types of pressure to consider: Physical (space, labor, confinement, violence) Social (laws, customs, hierarchy) Psychological (fear, silence, isolation) Temporal (waiting, repetition, loss of future)
Moral Geography Map Focus: Ethics, compromise, and survival shaped by place	What actions become normal or necessary in this setting, and why?	Divide your page into two columns: Setting Conditions Moral Consequences List 3–5 features of the setting (rules, expectations, dangers). For each feature, explain what it requires, rewards, or punishes. Optional Visual Layer—Use symbols or colors to mark: Survival choices Complicity Resistance	Take notes on: What behaviors does the setting make necessary for survival What moral compromises does it encourage or demand What actions would be unthinkable in a different place?	This map shows that ethics are shaped by environment, not just individual values.	Characters face moral compromise Systems normalize harm Survival conflicts with personal values
Before – Inside – After Map Focus: Transformation caused by entering a setting	How does entering this setting change the character?	Divide your page into three sections: BEFORE the Setting; Identify: The character’s beliefs or expectations Hopes, goals, or sense of identity INSIDE the Setting; Analyze: Key features of the environment Rules for survival or belonging Dominant emotions or pressures AFTER the Setting; Explain: What has changed in the character What is lost, gained, or hardened How the character now sees the world	Include at least one specific textual detail in each section. (Annotate during the activity.)	This map highlights setting as a catalyst for change, not just a location.	Characters move into a new environment A chapter centers on transition or realization Change is psychological or moral

A good way to differentiate for stronger students might be to have them choose the map for each chapter. You might give them instructions for how to choose that look something like this:

Is this chapter about power? → Agency Spectrum
Is it about constraint or survival? → Pressure Map
Is it about ethical compromise? → Moral Geography
Is it about change over time? → Before–Inside–After
Is it about belonging or not belonging? → Belonging Map

Setting is never neutral. These maps help students explain what the setting does and why it matters , and should help strengthen students’ setting analysis skills. I’ll let you know how it goes!

*AP® is a trademark registered by the College Board, which is not affiliated with, and does not endorse, this website.

Issues, Reflection

The Power of Having a “Thing”

August 28, 2025 Dana Huff Leave a comment

A picture of Beyoncé with the title AP Literature. Beyoncé is wearing sunglasses and holding a book titled "Fueled by Books and Beyoncé."

For years, I was known as the Harry Potter teacher. I loved Harry Potter. I had posters in my classroom and action figures on my desk. I used to create grammar exercises and tests with Harry Potter characters’ names and plot situations.

Then J. K. Rowling revealed her transphobia, and this “thing” that I loved suddenly felt wrong. I admit I felt betrayed because the message of those books is anti-bigotry. I couldn’t enjoy Harry Potter anymore. I used to re-read the books every year. Now all I see are troubling hints at Rowling’s feelings that I overlooked before. I certainly can’t share my enjoyment of Harry Potter with students, knowing some of them are members of the trans community.

On the other hand, I also know having a “thing” can be powerful. It gives your students something to talk with you about and a point of connection. Case in point: yesterday, one of my colleagues who likes Taylor Swift told me at lunch that two students who were in her class last year told her about Taylor Swift’s engagement the other day—she hadn’t heard the news yet, and they knew she’d be interested.

I struggled for a long time to figure out what my “thing” was. I used LEGO Stormtrooper minifigures in my learning management system for probably about a decade, but I wouldn’t say that Star Wars or LEGO are my “things.” I just happened to think the photographs were fun.

Clint Smith shared a post on social media years ago about how he still thought it was wild that Beyoncé didn’t win the Album of the Year Grammy for Lemonade. I had heard a little bit of the album, but his post made me decide it was time to seek the film out. I was blown away. I saw immediate curricular connections and started integrating the album into my AP Literature course. Still, it took me a few years to become a real fan. I believe my students over the last few years would probably say that my “thing” is Beyoncé. I realized this was true when my students started seeking me out to ask me about Beyoncé-related news. When I got concert tickets for the Renaissance tour, I shared the news with my students.

I decided to embrace it entirely. I put a new Beyoncé poster I made in Canva over my office door. I am decorating my LMS with Beyoncé images this year. Beyoncé is unquestionably my “thing.” In the years since I lost interest in Harry Potter and discovered Beyoncé, I admit I felt a bit adrift. While students are not our friends, and maintaining professional boundaries is critical, it can be fun to share your interests with students. It allows you to make connections and relate to each other, even if you don’t like the same things. Knowing their teachers have personal interests can increase students’ engagement in the class. Certainly my interest in Beyoncé has enhanced my curriculum. It shows my students that I will take their interests seriously, too.

What’s your “thing”? Do your students know?

Check out these articles for more:

How Teachers Can Use Their Hobbies to Boost Student Engagement | Edutopia
It Is All About You! Bring Your Personality and Interests Into the Classroom | NEA Today
5 Examples of Personal Interests to Share in the Classroom | The Art of Education
Sharing the Connections That Students Value | Edutopia

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Teaching Literature, Teaching Writing

Free Zuihitsu Poetry Lesson

February 18, 2025 Dana Huff

Zuihitsu is a Japanese poetry form that translates roughly to “running brush.” The idea behind a zuihitsu is to follow your “brush,” or pen, and see where it takes you. Zuihitsu can include short or long lines (think Walt Whitman). They may include snippets of dialog or stories. They rely on juxtaposition, fragments, and even contradictions. As Kimiko Hahn, a practitioner of zuihitsu, says, they rely on disorder.

This video might help you understand more:

Before writing zuihitsu, I like to share two examples with students. The first is Kimiko Hahn’s poem “The Orient.” This poem is also published in Hahn’s collection, The Narrow Road to the Interior. It’s well worth your time!

To start the lesson, I ask students to identify all the associations they have with the word “orient.” Kimiko Hahn will be using all of them in her poem, so it’s useful to get them thinking about the meanings of the word. We read Hahn’s poem and discuss our observations.

Next, I introduce zuihitsu as a “running brush” and share Jenny Xie’s “Zuihitsu.”

Only after we have seen these two zuihitsu do I define zuihitsu for students:

A genre of Japanese literature consisting of loosely connected personal essays and fragmented ideas that typically respond to the author’s surroundings.
Zuihitsu are neither prose poems nor essays, but they may resemble both in some ways.
The creation of order in zuihitsu depends on disorder. Zuihitsu demands, as its starting point, juxtapositions, fragments, contradictions, random materials, and pieces of varying lengths.

After this brief introduction, students write zuihitsu. I start by giving students about 10 minutes to freewrite about something they’ve been thinking about for a while.

Next, they spend about the same amount of time, more or less, writing about something that is related to that first topic.

After freewriting, it’s time to locate a few fragments to include. I encourage students to look up definitions, skim Wikipedia, find ads, and peruse song lyrics—whatever kind of fragments come to mind.

After these three steps, I ask students to move the three parts into a poem using Hahn’s and Xie’s poems as a model.

I taught this lesson most recently on our school’s annual Wellness Day because it can be quite a relaxing or cathartic exercise.

I asked one of the students who attended my session as she was leaving how she felt. She said, “I feel…. light.”

We can all use a bit of that right now.

A slide deck for this lesson is embedded below.

huffenglish.com

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Issues, ideas, and discussion in English Education and Technology