Rethinking curriculum, midyear

For the last several years, the 9th grade curriculum has been all centered around the theme of Coming of Age in an Unjust Society. The texts we cover during the school year were as follows: Fences, A Lesson Before Dying, To Kill a Mockingbird, Romeo and Juliet, Persepolis

For the last few years, we have had an increasing number of students read To Kill a Mockingbird in their middle school English classes, sort of forcing our hand to change. Our curriculum also, probably, was too black/white, and jettisoning TKAM (which is about my favorite book and one I love to teach) was a way for our curriculum to diversify and make more worldly.

So, this year, the planned curriculum was as follows: Fences, A Lesson Before Dying, In the Time of Butterflies, Romeo and Juliet, Persepolis. (Of course we have a bunch of short stories and poetry in there, too.)

We surveyed the students recently and discovered a lot had read Romeo and Juliet in middle school. There are also quite a bit who read A Lesson Before Dying. I have no problem with students reading books more than once, but there comes a point where it's not really fair. And so many of them try to fake it and just go by on memory, it becomes hard to teach around. (By the way, this is also a time where I share that it makes me pretty mad that so many middle schools teach these books. There are so many great young adult books that they have open for them yet they feel the need to teach books the students will be getting in high school. I don't know why and it's disappointing.)

As we finish up A Lesson Before Dying and move onto the next text, we're sort of wondering what sequence would work best. In re-reading In the Time of the Butterflies - which segues nicely in theme from ALBD - I'm also finding it pretty challenging, at least from the perspective of a 9th grader. It'll be a leap. But that's good, in a way. But is it too great of a leap?

I'm also wondering what to do with the Shakespeare unit. I love Romeo and Juliet, but so many students have been exposed to it already (some students described to me the same sort of film scene comparison activities that I planned on doing with them), that I'm thinking of going another way. Our school is putting on A Midsummer's Night Dream for the spring play, and I was considering that for a while. But I (a) don't like Midsummer very much; and (b) don't know it very well. I'm already teaching 9 new texts this year (8 in senior year and 1 - In the Time of the Butterflies - freshmen year), and don't know if I can add another one. I also considered Much Ado About Nothing, which I taught this year to the seniors and enjoyed. I think it's a fairly simple play that students will be able to understand. I don't really like that sort of misogyny with 9th graders (which is why I absolutely will not teach The Taming of the Shrew, which a couple of my colleagues are considering), but because the guys at least sort of get what's coming to them by the end (unlike in Taming), it could be do-able.

Another colleague is throwing the idea around of pairing Swimming in the Monsoon Sea with Othello. That could be interesting, though that might mean sacking Butterflies.

Decisions, decisions without time, time.