Now as I prepare to teach Wuthering Heights later this year, I admit I’m worried. I am well aware this book has a certain polarizing effect. My own mother hates it; she tried to read it based on my recommendation, and she could not get into it. I read a post somewhere recently, and I regret I can’t recall where, in which the poster argued that he/she could understand the appeal of the other classics, but not Wuthering Heights. The poster wondered why on earth this book was considered classic and didn’t just die a natural death over time, like so many other forgotten books that are never read and go out of print. And I felt a little bit sick.

I came to Wuthering Heights really late. In fact, I didn’t read it in its entirety until the summer of 2008. I tried to read it when assigned in high school, but I couldn’t keep up with the reading schedule set by my teacher (I am a slow reader), so I gave up. The book sucked me in when Catherine Linton disturbed Mr. Lockwood’s sleep that awful night at Wuthering Heights. It was like Catherine grabbed me and didn’t let go. Over the last year and half, I have developed a sort of unhealthy obsession with the book. I can’t figure it out at all. I don’t like the characters, really. Like is a word one can’t use to describe them. In many cases, they’re horrible people, and it’s hard to dredge up any sympathy for them at all. No, I don’t like them at all. I love them, though. I told my husband that I couldn’t explain how I felt about this book in the same terms: I don’t like it at all, but I love it. In a very real way, I feel like I am presenting my heart to my students with even chances that it will be stepped on. The easy thing to do would be not to teach it, I suppose. Instead, I am going to put myself out there, and before we begin reading, I will say this:

Before we read this book, I need to share a secret with you. I love this book with an unhealthy passion. Harry Potter might be jealous. I’m not sure. The fact is that I think about this book a lot. I Google the title a lot and look at the pictures and articles that result. I watch the movie. And I just can’t tell you why. The characters are horrible people with few redeeming qualities. The book has beautiful descriptions, but I usually respond most to books with characters I like. This book is the lone exception. When you have a work of literature like this that you just love so much, it can be scary to teach it because you might not like it. This book is one of those books that people seem to either really love or really hate. I know that if you don’t like it, it’s not like you’re being personal about it anymore than you are being personal about it when you read an assigned book that you do like. It’s the book you respond to rather than the teacher, although it is my hope that a good teacher makes a book more bearable if you dislike it and even better if you like it. I quote another English teacher when I say, “Like many English teachers, I feel that favorite books are part of my soul, and the question arises, To what degree am I willing to bare that soul to hundreds of adolescents, who may be harboring their own quirks, prejudices, and lightning-quick dismissive judgments?”

You have my permission not to like Wuthering Heights, but I ask you to please be gentle with me, dear readers, because I am handing you my soul when I hand you this novel. Please don’t trample it to death. All I ask is that you keep an open mind. This book might just change your life the way it changed mine.*

*Well expressed portions of this plea were lovingly cribbed from Rebecca Hayden’s article. I just don’t know how to say it better than she did.

This post originally appeared on huffenglish.com and is © Dana Huff.

The Perils of Teaching the Books We Love

This post originally appeared on huffenglish.com and is © Dana Huff.

GCTE Teacher of the Year

I keep most of my documents on my computer and several of my unit plans at the UbD Educators wiki. I am fundamentally disorganized, but I can usually find what I need when I need it, and if I can’t, I can print it again. I could really use a system like Jim’s. Why? This is what my desk looks like:

Here’s a shot of the other side:

And the kicker is that several folks have commented lately on how neat it looks. As in you can see parts of the actual desk.

The trouble is that organization takes a great deal of time to get going. Once you start, it saves you a lot of time. Unfortunately, with five preps, it’s hard to find time to get it started. I need an assistant!

This post originally appeared on huffenglish.com and is © Dana Huff.

Organization

photo credit: Annie Ominous

Rest in Peace, J. D. Salinger. I have fond memories of teaching your work.

• If a Body Catch a Body…
• Reading Salinger

This post originally appeared on huffenglish.com and is © Dana Huff.

J. D. Salinger, 1909-2010

Download the Sonnet Notebook file.

Our goal is to ask students to memorize and perform a sonnet. I like Matthew Macfadyen’s interpretation of Sonnet 29 by Shakespeare that’s embedded in the file.

This post originally appeared on huffenglish.com and is © Dana Huff.

Sonnets