The Order of Things

We all remember the books we had to read in high school English classes. The Odyssey was the book that my teacher decided to start us on in 9th grade English class, and I can still remember the groans and anxiety of being asked to understand such an old text. Why she started off with this text, I do not know or frankly understand. I love literature and I had a hard time looking forward to the read of the semester because I was afraid all of the reading was going to be epics like that of Homer. To my surprise, the reading got more intriguing as the semester drove on. We read books like I Am the Cheese and The Man Without A Face. In my curriculum and teaching class this semester, we have discussed this very idea I bring up for you now. What is the point of starting off a semester with a book you know must of your students will not enjoy? The English lovers that we are find hope that every child will be as moved by a text as we are, but that is not the way it works. Kids don't go into a required reading with the open mind to be changed by the words. So what should we do to get them more interested and at least act like they care? I suggest starting the semester off with books like the two I listed previously. If you are looking for some sort of order in the timeline of the reading you assign, strive to look at this in a different way. I don't want my students dreading the rest of the semester of reading because the first text is a puzzle that cannot be cyphered easily. I want to wait until the end of the semester to give their brains a real challenge because hopefully by that time, they will have learned a few things from my class.