I am a first year teacher, teaching 10th grade English. We’re in the middle of a unit about outsiders and outcasts. The curriculum texts leave a lot to be desired in terms of engagement and depth, so I’m looking for supplementary texts. I teach core and honors. They all love twisted, disturbing stories (like The Scarlet Ibis by James Hurst), and my honors kids love texts we can tie into current events (like The Wretched and the Beautiful by E. Lily Yu). Do any teachers with more experience have any recommendations? Texts that could help students empathize with marginalized groups would be a bonus.

Hey Reddit,

I’m in a bit of a tough spot and could really use some advice from those who’ve been through this. I’ve applied to over a thousand ESL teaching jobs—yes, you read that right—and I’m still stuck. Most of my applications have either been ignored or rejected, and the hardest part? I can’t find any schools offering visa sponsorship.

Here’s a bit about me:

• Single mom with 3 kids
• Over 10 years of teaching experience (high school and college levels)
• I’m passionate about moving to Thailand and making this work, but the visa sponsorship part has been my biggest hurdle.

Here’s what I’ve tried:

• Applying directly to schools and on job boards (just about everywhere)
• Tailoring my resume and cover letter for each application (using ATS-friendly formatting)
• Reaching out to recruiters, but haven’t had much luck there either

I’m feeling a little lost at the moment. Has anyone been in the same situation? How did you find visa-sponsored roles, and what else can I do to stand out? Any resources or tips I might be missing?

I’d love any advice you can share. Thanks in advance!

TL;DR: Struggling to find visa-sponsored ESL jobs in Thailand as a single mom with 10+ years of teaching experience. Applied everywhere but still no luck. Help a fellow job-seeker out!

I have a student who is going to be out of school for a solid month due to back surgery. We will be starting our Macbeth unit then. Of course, Macbeth needs to be acted out and discussed heavily in class but she won't have access to that.

Does anyone know of any good distance learning materials for Macbeth? Or have you taught it this way? All of my materials I have could be done on her own technically, esp if her parents allowed her to watch the 2015 version.

Any ideas?

I was working with VIPKID 4 years and half and recently started with Wukong education since summer. VIPKID did not renew my new contract and Wukong education is only giving me like 5-6 consistent hours a week which clearly isn't enough. I currently have a TEFL and TESOL contract and also possess a bachelor's in Mathematics and a minor degree in Psychology. Sadly I do not have a teaching license which has held me back from some of the higher paying opportunities.
I'd like to know if anyone has any recommendations or good places to apply for ESL/ELA jobs preferably with not shit pay. I'm down to go for Math as well. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated since pretty much being jobless has been heavily affecting me.

Hello all,

I'm trying to find texts for use with high school students. The main issue is that the ones I see most frequently recommended here are things students have read with other teachers in varying grades.

I wondered if anyone has ever used Haruki Murakami's writing with HS students (short stories in particular, but any, really).

If you have, which? If you have not but would, which would you?

thanks in advance.

please I really need the answer

I'm in pursuit of my Master of Education and am in my student teaching placement for a full academic year. This semester it's mainly observation with teaching a handful of lessons here and there, and sometimes my mentor and I will co-teach a period. Starting spring semester I'll be teaching our class periods full time and have, generally speaking, a lot of freedom for a focal unit text. The library has a lot of texts I can use but this one in particular caught my eye.

I wanted to teach Othello to my two 11th grade classes and my mentor is supportive, but she warned me about students instantly checking out at the mention of Shakespeare. One class is pretty motivated but I have another class where a handful of them are pretty apathetic to reading/writing so I worry about teaching to them. I want things to be accessible to them and for them to feel like they can do it and want to do it ... but also want to give them a challenge because I know they can handle it. Does anyone have any advice?

Context: I'm in an inner-city school and am basing my idea off copies my district has access to.

For whatever reason, my 10th grade classes have zoomed through Mockingbird this year and we are on track to finish reading the book right before Thanksgiving break. I'm going to have 3 weeks with them between Thanksgiving and Christmas to do something for a final.

I would really like to read excerpts and/or show them the movies of The Hate U Give and/or Just Mercy, and then do something for their final that synthesizes those 3 texts. I've always wanted to pair these modern texts with Mockingbird and I'm excited that I'll actually have the time to try it. But that's as far as my idea goes.

Anybody have some extra brain cells to spare and want to give me some ideas?

I’ve done all the standard speeches, advertisements, etc. but really want something fun and engaging, because there’s only so many speeches we can analyze. Any ideas/activities/texts that your students have loved during a rhetorical analysis and/or argumentation unit? Anything helps.

Hi! For one of my education classes, I have to design a lesson plan. I was just wondering if this sounds like a good plan that meets the standards I'm aiming to? It essentially goes like this:

1. Review figurative language
2. Have students read an annotate a poem
3. As a class, discuss the elements of figurative language that are present, how the affect the meaning/interpretation of the poem, etc
4. Give the students another poem
5. Have them write a paragraph where they identify at least 3 elements of figurative language and how it affects the meaning of the poem

For reference, I'm basing the assignment on these standards:

-Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings. a. Interpret figures of speech (e.g., euphemism, oxymoron) in context and analyze their role in the text. b. Analyze nuances in the meaning of words with similar denotations.

-Acquire and use accurately general academic and domain-specific words and phrases, sufficient for reading, writing, speaking, and listening at the college and career readiness level; demonstrate independence in gathering vocabulary knowledge when considering a word or phrase important to comprehension or expression.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Hi! I'm looking for resources or people to talk with as I make the transition from college teaching to high school. I am a limited-term instructor at a very large university in Georgia. I hold a MA in communication and a BA in English and film studies. For 6 years I've taught classes in rhetoric, public speaking, and interpersonal communication. After years of thinking it over, I've decided to leave the university system and pursue a career teaching high school English. There are a number of reasons why I'm doing this. First off, my pay as an instructor is very low - lower than the starting HS teacher salary. I have zero job security. I am paid by the class, so I only make money if there are classes for me to teach each semester. No classes for me to teach? No money. There's also no sense of community at the college I teach. I have very little interaction with my colleagues and no relationship with my students. I walk in a general classroom, teach to 30 strangers, and then walk out. I have no office, and I never pass anyone I know on campus. It's a profoundly lonely experience, and it's done a number on my mental health. I'm also disinterested in the material I teach. My background is in English, and I'd rather teach English than communication. And finally, my "term" as a limited-term instructor is coming to an end. Even if I didn't want to leave, I'm being forced to.

I love teaching, and for years I've been drawn to the idea of teaching in high school because (1) I believe education is much more than lecturing 50-75 mins straight before a wall of silent students and (2) I want to be involved more in a school community.

I understand the stark differences between college and HS teaching, but the thought of contributing to a school community and feeling actually like I'm a part of something is preferable than the precarious, isolating experience of teaching as a limited-term instructor at the college level.

My plan now is to get certified, but I don't exactly know how other than to pursue a MAT, which will probably be what I end up doing.

I'm not looking for anyone to change my mind. I'm just curious if there's anyone I could talk to about making the transition, getting certified in Georgia, or if there are any resources online about switching careers to teaching. Thank you!

Is there a way to do this? I'd really like to do this digitally this year instead of trying to have kids keep up with slips of paper and then me have to keep them all year and shuffle through them if an issue comes up. I'd much rather just have a ready to go spreadsheet or something, or at least something I can Ctrl+F on.

Anyone know of something, preferably free?

Hello! I’m going to be teaching a semester of Women’s Literature next semester and I’m looking for any assistance on structuring the curriculum. If anyone has anything they recommend or have done in the past, I would be so grateful for any assistance! This is a high school elective, mostly seniors. I want to do a summative where they have an independent reading book they’ve read throughout the semester and then make some sort of connection with another work- music, literature, culture, etc. Throughout the course, I’m open to using movies, articles, television, music, interviews, etc alongside traditional texts. Honestly, the more discussion and discourse we can have as a class, the better!Thank you in advance!

Hi all! Looking for some literature recommendations for two first-year writing courses. One dealing with multicultural perspectives and the other about adolescent literature. Considering the population of students I work with, it would be great to have short stories, novels, and/or poetry.

Shorter works might work better. I know life really isn't easy for anyone right now and college is all about learning to balance responsibilities, but I have a lot of first generation students, students with learning disabilities and mental health issues, and students who have to work full time and/or take care of siblings and other family members. It's so important to me to try to be inclusive and help all my students succeed.

It would be great to teach works that really appeal to them. My students come from diverse backgrounds and bring a lot to the classroom. It means a lot to me to show up and give the same in return. There will be essay writing, revisions, and a research paper.

I would appreciate any advice and recommendations. If there is any literature that would encompass both themes, that would be great too! Thanks for reading :)

So far I have gone through column writing, memoir writing and personal essays. I have one more class to teach them one final part of nonfiction. Would anyone have any suggestions? Our class is 90 minutes. With the last 30 minutes used for writing.

This week I'm supplying at a school where the whole school will be gone on a field trip. I am supervising the students who are not attending! As of now it looks like there will be students from K-8 staying behind. I'm looking for a variety of activities to do with them throughout the day that the kinders and the older students can do and will find entertaining! We have access to the gym, library, technology, art and crafts supplies, etc. What would you do on a day like this?

Hello!

I am struggling to find informational texts for, "The Hunger Games"

If anyone has any suggestions, that would be awesome !

I see and hear lots of teachers talking about using AI to generate grades and comments for students on their work. Am I being an old curmudgeon when I say this feels wrong? It seems too impersonal and like a cheat. I also won’t actually know the students’ work styles if I used it all the time. What are your thoughts? Do you use it? I feel overworked by how much grading I do all the time but I like to give personalized feedback on writing.

Hey! I'm wondering what scores on the practice tests I should be getting in order to feel confident about taking the actual 5038 test. My state needs a 167. I know calculating is a big part of it, but does anyone have any advice regarding what should be aimed for for comfortability? I remember scoring a 187 on my Reading Core and 184 on Writing. But its the things like corresponding authors that really spoofed me, even though I thought I was pretty prepared, on the Form 1 I just took and got 90/130. I'm sure that now knowing what to expect things will be smoother, especially because I just tried to take it out of nowhere, but the original question remains. Thank you!

Hello! I am in year 3 of teaching and I just lost my first student to s*icide. I am shattered, as is the community. In wake of this, I am looking to incorporate more SEL activities, mental health stuff, classroom community building, etc into my course.

Obviously there was nothing I could have done to prevent this, but I am determined to move these practices up on my priority list. Please help me in building my toolbox of things to do, say, teach, engage with, write about, etc regarding this type of stuff.

So, overall, looking for freebies, ideas, resources, activities, prompts, projects, etc that will help me strengthen my class community both today and moving forward.

So, my students are in the rough draft > final draft stage of their research papers. They've been working on them for two weeks now.

We had an immense family emergency happen back in mid October when my daughter was put into inpatient psych. She's been back a week but the incidents and stress are still coming. I had to take off work today, my first day of the week I usually do verbal conferences for final drafts, to see my own psychiatrist because I feel like I am right on that edge from all this stress and hurt.

And then my youngest came home from school today with pink eye. So I will miss work tomorrow too.

This is now two days down in the week I dedicate for verbal conferences. I WILL NOT be able to get to all of my students, assuming nothing else happens this week and I'm not out again. I don't typically like doing the old school "type in their papers" rough draft feedback because they never read it and it takes so much f-ing time to do it and I've got two sick kids with a husband who's working late all this week. I don't have the time or brain power to do that right now.

So, what can I do instead? We've done peer review at least once but many of them couldn't benefit from it because they didn't have enough of their rough draft written. I've been there these past two weeks, open for them to ask questions, both digitally and in person. They've done self-assessment today.

Are there additional activities they can do? Ways for me to speed up/lower the workload for me providing them feedback?

I find myself in the position to choose a novel for a struggling 11th grader to read 1:1 with an instructor. The text in the Pearson curriculum we’re following is Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. This student has never read a book cover to cover before and is reading comfortably at about a 5th/6th grade level, so the dialect especially is frustratingly challenging.

I’m looking for recommendations for books that might be more approachable and can still be used to teach the same types of skills as the Hurston. I’d love another Harlem Renaissance text, just so we could still include some of the setting/theme elements from the assessments, but it’s not a deal breaker necessarily.

Any and all guidance or suggestions would be appreciated!

What professional development has worked for you?

Is there something that you have heard of that you are impressed with and haven't had a chance to do yet?

Are there any books that have been important to you in understanding your classroom, your teaching, your students, etc.?

for a little bit of context, i work at a tiny private school that was founded just a few years ago. i jumped aboard soon after its creation. this is my second year at this school; i currently teach a 4/5 combination and have taught all the students before apart from the new ones.

during parent teacher conferences on friday, i made the mistake (apparently) of having the three novels i am doing literature circles with beginning next week out on my desk. i had a couple parents tell me what they think about which book their child should read.

in general, i am very confident in my decisions regarding pedagogy and my instructional design is very intentional, as i'm sure all of yours is. i have a question though...

a parent straight up interrupted what i was saying to his wife about his child's performance to say, "this wouldn't be a good book for ____". we had already run over 5 minutes and i couldn't in the moment think of a way to ask why without sounding like i was questioning him, so i didn't.

i have three choices now. keep him in the same group (the one that's right for him) or move him to a more simple and slower paced literacy group, or a much more complex, fast-paced one. i'm a big fan of using a proportional number of words to the size of the problem, so i haven't communicated this at all but i am wondering what you as fellow educators would do in this situation.

thank you all in advance

Hello all!

I was planning on doing a lesson that I wanted to label free writing, but the more I thought about it, the more I pondered whether it is actually free writing or not.

The plan is to play a song, and have the kids write for about 4 minutes. No prompt, just to write without stopping. Would this still be considered free writing if they are reacting? Or would this be a reaction?

Thanks!

For context, I teach 7th grade ELA Honors classes (we are a public application school; we only offer honors classes). According to MAP testing, we average right on grade level for reading.

Recently I pitched to admin that my class read the Hunger Games this year. I normally wouldn’t ask, but this book is not anywhere in our district approved reading list, so I wanted to make sure the school had my back should this book be contested. I expected there possibly being an issue with the violence in the book, but what I didn’t expect admin to be concerned about was the reading level of the book: their response was that it was too low level for my kids, being that it’s lexile level is 810. This caught me off guard, as I honestly don’t pay super close attention to lexile levels. When selecting a class novel, I generally think about what is going to interest my students the most, and prompt a deep level of thinking.

I pointed out that historically our school has read the Outsiders in the 7th grade, and it sits at a 750 lexile (4th grade!), and the response I got was that of “oops, we didn’t realize that! We are sorry we allowed this in the past.” So now no more Outsiders, which devastates me!

Fellow ELA teachers, I seek your help. Have I been wrong in my selections for my class reads by focusing more on thought complexity and interest than text complexity and vocabulary? If so, why are there so many academically popular middle school books written at such a low lexile level? Most of the books approved for my grade level by our district are below an 800 lexile level (11 of the 16). Where is the disconnect?

If I’ve been correct in my way of thinking, how the heck do I convince my admin that my students should be reading books that have been assigned lexile levels grades below them? Help!

Hello everyone! ELA teacher finishing thier degree here, and I guess I'm just curious more than anything. I took the NES 301 test and passed it which I'm happy about, but I am a bit bummed because I feel like I could have done better. I didn't study as much as I should have so my low score is on me.

Does anyone know what the highest score you can get is? This shouldn't be bugging me as much as it is, but I half feel like I let myself down. ELA is MY subject. I can teach and elaborate on it up and down, but apparently, I wasn't erudite enough to Ace the test. Figures.

I am currently teaching kindergarten but not feeling very mentally stimulated. I’m exploring moving into ELA as my bachelor’s is in English and I think I could enjoy the content more, as well as (am I being romantic here??) the professional dialogue with coworkers. Of course there are lots of factors to consider, but a specific question I have is to how my kinder experience will be viewed by hiring teams. I do have other grade level experience, up to 5th, and was even a TOSA/Dean for a year at a high school. Will hiring committees think I’m too inexperienced since Ive been teaching kindergarten for the last 3 years (of an 8 year career) so far?

I'm doing a demo lesson to interview for a job. All they gave me is the objective. I have to plan a 30 minute lesson.

Objective: SWBAT describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges.

The group will be a mix of ELL and students with disabilities.

I'm looking for suggestions on short stories that I could use to build a lesson around.

Please and thank you.

Hi everyone,

My admin mentioned to me recently that they’re looking for new ELA electives. I know we already have creative writing, journalism, drama and public speaking. (I’m in my first year, so I’m not too familiar with the full list of what has been taught in the past or what is currently taught.)

But, I am very interested in designing a course, and my principal is very on board with me doing so. I have a lot of freedom as far as that goes as long as I get the OK from my department chair. So, does anyone have any ideas of fun electives? I’m considering asking students about things that they would be interested in as well, but I didn’t want to start there.