I’m very excited to announce that I have opened an educational consulting practice, Dana Huff Educational Consulting. One of the things I’ve learned over the past two years as an Instructional Coach is how much I enjoy helping teachers explore ideas, work through instructional challenges, and develop curriculum. Sharing my classroom ideas here on this…
For a book called How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster’s guide is surprisingly entertaining. I first encountered the book in its first edition, back in 2005 (how is that possible?), years before I began teaching AP Literature. Foster explains that he originally imagined his audience as nontraditional students returning to college,…
I absolutely love teaching Song of Solomon. I’m excited to start it with my current AP Lit seniors this Friday. One reason I love teaching this book is that it rewards the patient reader, and it’s a joy to see students discover Morrison’s writing. I recently heard from a former student who graduated years ago, and…
Students finish reading a chapter and ask: “What does it mean?” or “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…
I’m excited to announce that I will be presenting at NCTE’s upcoming annual convention on November 19-22 in Philadelphia. I will share details about when and where you can find my presentations once I have them. Session 1: GSEA’s Roundtable: Innovate & Illuminate: Expanding Queer and Trans Possibilities in English Education My part of the…
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?”…
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…
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…
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…
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…
