That’s the hope though, right? That each sentence is a step towards where you need to be? (And that each sentence you re-write makes you just a bit sharper than you were before.)

In my 11+12 classes, we have deliberate discussions about pros and cons of AI in the classroom. Several juniors wrote personal narratives this fall discussing how AI has affected - for better and worse - their relationship to reading and the learning process.

High school, grades 9-12. We restrict genAI as a form of fabrication rather than plagiarism - analogous to making up lab results rather than copying another student’s homework in a chem class.

My syllabus permits using genAI to find other relevant sources and check grammar; no other use allowed.

A1: …opens up a lot of room for great interpretations - and adaptations! It immediately opens up the question of how much the witches influence Macbeth vs. merely enable him. (Some adaptations, like the Great Performances version w/Patrick Stewart, give the witches much more emphasis b/c of this.)

I find it useful to include Shakespeare in 9th - the kids I’ve talked to in 10th say it sets them up to do better with Shakespeare in their Brit/world lit units as sophomores. But another Shakespeare play might do just as well. Winter’s Tale or Much Ado might be a replacement, or a condensed Lear.

I’ve taught R+J in 9th grade the last couple of years (my first two teaching high school) - inherited it from a previous teacher. I like it as a way to talk about family dynamics and adolescent behavior with that grade, but I wonder if it might fit better in 10th or 11th for that reason…

But, in something like a response to the kids in “We Real Cool,” the speaker here doesn’t cite examples of life or hope in the world *around* the young person. The source of hope is the young person themselves.

The phrase “this certain day” stands out to me. The speaker doesn’t promise a long life, or even better days ahead. Death is still present, just not imminent. (We see a similar connection between youth and death in Brooks’s famous “We Real Cool.”)

Additional context: some of my colleagues at other local (largely Catholic) schools in this ACC program teach it as a lit class, just keeping the required common assessment (a Dissoi Logoi-style essay). I include some literature - e.g., Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own - but it’s still rhet/comp focused.

We have a similar model - I teach ACC comp to juniors, who then take an ACC American lit class as seniors. (Non-ACC students take a different American lit class as juniors.)

Aside from AP forcing this curriculum on some schools - do you see any downsides to less lit in a given year of English?