Quote: Provided I passed my certification exam, I am to teach high school English to seniors. Nothing like throwing me into the wolves!!
Mtn - do you have an idea what KIND of classes of seniors you will be teaching? Levels, student backgrounds, etc.?
I would say, looking at my own kids' experiences in high school, that a few things stand out as important:
- you may not have a choice as to reading material, but if you do - relevance is so important to kids. Although a great classical education is a wonderful thing, and my oldest enjoyed it, most kids cannot understand why they are being forced to read all these irrelevant (in their eyes) difficult to understand dead white guys. So anything you can do to make the reading relevant to their lives is important.
- creative writing gets short shrift in high school English. Seniors are done with their SATs, so maybe you could lay off the essay writing and let them write some fun stuff?
- you've learned to deal with some VERY difficult people (ex, Rat) through DBing, so just DB those kids!!!! Positive reinforcement works better then negative, although negative seems to be popular with high school teachers! Try complimenting the kids and see how they start to work for you!
