Revitalizing High School Reading Programs: Diversifying Book Selections for Engaged Learning

Read and write for pleasure.

For the past three years, I’ve had the honor of leading the summer reading program at my school. This experience has provided valuable insights into creating engaging and educational reading experiences for teenagers during the summer. Additionally, I’ve developed reading programs for winter breaks and fostered independent reading to expose my students to a wide variety of books.

My journey began with the recognition that all texts, whether from textbooks or prescribed curricula, have their own historical and cultural significance. While I enjoy teaching classics like “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “The Pearl” by John Steinbeck, or “The Great Gatsby,” I’ve discovered that a wealth of rich, layered texts can open students’ eyes to different perspectives.

For instance, this year I taught “Upstate” by Kalisha Buckhanon, a contemporary author. The novel explores the lives of a young couple in Harlem, with the male protagonist being wrongfully accused and imprisoned. The narrative unfolds through their exchanged letters over several years. My students found this an enlightening experience, leading to discussions on love, personal transformation, and social issues.

Moreover, I’ve been inspired by the work of Gholdy Muhammad, who emphasizes the need for literature to represent diverse identities and intellects. Such texts can challenge ingrained beliefs or ask probing questions. An example is Octavia E. Butler’s “Kindred,” a novel I taught this year. To my delight, one of my students informed me that a TV series based on the book has aired on HBO, demonstrating its contemporary relevance.

Through these experiences, I’ve learned about the historical context of high school reading lists and explored strategies, tips, and theories to expand literacy. I’m excited to bring this knowledge and experience into the 2023-2024 academic year.

Let me know what books you love to read with adolescent learners, either for pleasure, as an anchor or mentor text, or for independent reading.

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Why I Love TikTok Content Creators (And So Should You) — And a List of Zany TikToks I Found

I have a penchant for the theatrical. 

The dime novel. The beauty in the absurd. The homemade movie. The guy with the camera turned on himself. The take-a-household-item-and-make-a-prop kind of performativity. 

You get the gist.

And where can you find the most beautiful schlock the Internet has ever created? Why go no further than TikTok. It's a platform where content creators put their own identities front and center — and it's a highly satisfying romp.

If you didn't know — TikTok is a mobile video app owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. The first iteration of the app was dubbed Musical.ly, authored by software Engineers Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang. Basically, the app began as a lip syncing app called Musical.ly and its companion live streaming app called live.ly. TikTok was a rebrand of the app that attempted to fold both features of the two social apps into one.

And the rest is history. 

Just as Twitter revolutionized the short writing form of 265 characters, TikTok has ushered in the micro-length video form of 15 to 30 seconds.

The draw of TikTok is twofold — it’s easy to use and to create content with, coupled with its immense sound and music library and its unending filter library. However, the best TikToks have neither — they’re pure spun dioramas of peoples constructed private lives. And it’s why I first was enamored of the platform — peering into people’s live created in a dizzying array of quick action theater of the absurd. 

Here are some gems I’ve collected along the way. 

1. The Smiling, Waving Homage to The Sitcom Montage

This teen has an instinctual appreciation for the visual grammar of the iconic television sitcom montage — ignore the silly tune — and pay attention to how his edits match perfectly something out of American television classics Growing Pains or Family Ties.

2. Antoinette's Casual Use of the Cigarette

It’s easy to dismiss @antoniteegrams because her videos are riffs on soundbytes. But she’s so humble in her mien and I love her casual use of the cigarette. I have no idea what the original source of the soundbyte is but that’s what makes TikTok endearing. Any random noise can be strewn into actor’s gold. Andy Warhol was partly right — in the future everyone will be famous — but not just for five minutes, but for as long as you have working Internet and a smartphone with a halfway decent camera.

3. The Family Dinner Table is Often a Suitable Mise-en-Scene

@eddiepdoyle videos his grandmother’s acerbic comebacks in dozens of video. TikTok has made many folks Internet famous because a cousin, or grandson, or daughter, or someone, picked up a camera and started candidly filming a family member. The immediacy of the moment is right at your fingertips, as if you’ve stumbled into this woman’s cluttered kitchen and she wants to know what you want from her. Classic.

4. A Colorful Edit

It’s possible that this edit is rather basic. But it's relatively early TikTok. I like the use of color and fashion and the sheer fact that the guy is having a lot of fun. And that's quite a mess for one less-than-thirty-second video.

5. Boys Wear Tee-Shirts on Their Heads When They Play a Girl

So teenage boys on TikTok will don a tee-shirt on their head when they're playing a female role. It's sheer schlock. But a testament to the fact that no TikTok star has a wardrobe warehouse or access to MGM studios. Although, it is odd that teenage boys think a woman's hair is well represented by donning a tee on their head. Oh, girl!

6. Sissy That Walk!

If you can't get on the runway, girl you better werk. So does this amazing runway walk that is probably this TikToker's backyard. Sissy that walk!

7. The Five Minute Bathroom Break 

TikTok lends a view into working class jobs — fast food attendants, nail salonists, customer service representatives, and the lot. One thing network television cannot do — even though it has tried with shows like All in the Family and Roseanne — is replicate the experience of an everyday American's day at work. And often that means taking a five minute bathroom break and talking to the mirror. Period.

8. Right?!

I am not sure what to think of this video. Brilliant? Yes.

9. The Smiling Boy

This boy has created an entire fandom over the fact that he is a teenager who enjoys smiling.

10. The Histrionic School Lunch Lady Performance

Again put a piece of fabric on your head and all of a sudden you are a woman. And I wouldn't even call this drag. I call it histrionic performativity. And I didn't steal that from Judith Butler.

11. It's Got To Be the Sweater

It could be ironic that this guy is wearing a Playboy sweater. Right?! Multiple Tik-Toks are created by people, mostly teenagers, who are bored. And lots of TikTokers were born out of the Covid-19 pandemic.

12. The Best Comedian is Probably Your Neighbor, Mr. Pickles

Again — the beauty of TikTok is that it creates stars out of ordinary people. I love this guy's vulnerability and authenticity all packaged into a nice, yellowy-orangey color scheme.

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Short Film Review: Broke (2017)

The Short Film "Broke" - 2017 (35 minutes, in Norwegian with English subtitles)
Norwegian Filmmakers Make Another Short Film About Something Not Quite Right in Norway’s Affluent Suburbs

Filmmaker Bjørn Erik Pihlmann Sørensen and screenwriter Einar Sverdrup have teamed up and made a new short that serves as another installment in what looks to be a series of movies about the hidden underbelly of Norwegian suburban society. I reviewed the duo’s short film Reckless in June. It’s a troubling film about responsibility, desire, and sexual exploration gone awry. You can read my review here. I don’t want to play a game of compare and contrast. I will write about Broke using a more or less reader-response approach to interpreting a work of art. What I will do is look at the film as it stands, first, and what I think it is trying to say. Then — if I am so inclined I can make stray observations that lend itself more to how it opens a dialogue with its predecessor Reckless.
Here is my review of Broke:
Broke is a story of how a rather well-to-do upper-middle-class family deals with the prospect of going bankrupt. That is how the movie has been packaged — and it is the expectation I had going into watching it. Full disclosure: I was able to view the film by way of the filmmakers (since the movie has not yet been made available for full release). Mr. Philman sent me a screener (for which I am very grateful). Broke is still making its presence known at festivals and in special screenings around the world; It will debut in New York at Cinema Village and run from August 16-22. As many independently funded projects go — the movie is hoping to get picked up for a wider release.

The Anticipation that Something Bad is Going to Happen
Sometimes a movie wants desperately for you to think something awful is about to happen. And Broke is a movie just like that. Someone puts a weapon in a backpack. But it is not revealed who. A married couple fight in their bedroom thinly keeping their row secret from the kids who are supposedly sleeping down the hall. I expected violence to ensue in just the first few minutes of watching this movie. It begins taut and on edge. And I must say the movie freaked me out because for the majority of its storytelling it hugs close to a school shooting narrative (a horrifying series of hells Americans have been facing since Columbine).I had this sense of foreboding since a large chunk of the story follows young adolescent Pia (Sofie Albertine Foss) as she goes about her school day — a little uneasily. In fact, everyone in this movie seems very much ill at ease. No one is enjoying their current dispensation. Pia is enormously bright but chooses to hide her gifts and gives off the appearance of a wallflower. She is an observer, watching Daniel (Marcus Rix), a hunky boy, a bully who taunts a smaller boy, Jonas (Arthur Hakalahti). Daniel belittles Jonas with impunity, and in one unsettling moment physically harasses him in the school swimming pool. The film presents us with long shots of Pia, Daniel, and Jonas — and other kids and adults who inhabit this school. I did not pick up much joy; the blasé nature of adolescent Je ne sais quoi seemed grossly disproportionate here. The kids in this film are candidates for something very bad about to happen. But we don’t know what. Or how. The film teases us a bit; the Checkhov gun is literally a gun but we don’t know how it will turn up and what character will possess it or use it or whether someone will cause harm with it.

    We do eventually get the answers to these question (sort of) — what work the film does before it reveals its hands is to get us to know these three disparate teenagers a little better. Pia shows a need to withdraw (as, for example, when she tells her teacher she does not have her swimming suit with her). She sits in the bleachers instead and watches events transpire. Jonah is the picked-on kid. The pariah. Pia shows concern for Jonas; Daniel is all masculine bravado and “I don’t give a f***.” However, Pia is drawn to Daniel like a moth to a flame. And here is where the film pivots.

An Aggressive Sexual Encounter Holds the Middle of the Film
Pia joins Daniel after school; first, berating him for being a bully, and actively standing up for Jonas. But Pia takes the bait and follows Daniel to his house, and we and the camera are made witness to an awkward sexual detente between the two characters. But is it really? When Pia tries to put a stop to Daniel’s advances, he turns on her. And Pia leaves, angry and frustrated. Daniel cannot stand to be rebuffed; his retaliation is to call Pia “a slut.” Watching this interaction between the two characters I was taken aback. Where is the story taking me (us)? Daniel is aggressive and he outrightly makes a move on Pia; he is physical and rough and he exposes his body to Pia and to the camera, wanting her to perform oral sex on him. The camera does not turn away. I was relieved when Pia, deciding not to have sex, leaves Daniel’s bedroom. She makes a choice — and then the movie changes directions again. Hints are dropped throughout the movie that it is Pia’s family who has been hit with a financial blow. Her father has lost a significant amount of money (presumably through bad investments) and is forced to have to shed his assets and move his family to a different city to survive. Pia is shattered by this revelation and she is processing what this means for her. I do not want to reveal the ending because I think this is a film that deserves to be watched from beginning to end. I will tell you that I found the climax to be teeth-grinding; I had to turn my head away from the camera. Something awful does happen in this movie, but something is also restored. But it takes a lot of pain and pent-up frustration to get there. Checkhov’s gun is revealed in the end — but the gun does not end up being quite what one thought it would be. The movie ends with deep sadness.

What is Broke Trying to Say?
A key to the movie’s inner logic, I will say this as a closing, comes earlier in the film — when the kids are in class and the teacher is proceeding to dole out an ostensibly boring lesson on the fall of the Roman Empire. The teacher asks his class, “What would you do if you had no money?”. His question falls on deaf ears because the kids in his class do not know what it means to be truly broke. They are blithe in their privilege and I get the sense, watching the film, there is a lost ability to deeply care. I am a teacher so I get bored high school students. And suffice it to say — the teacher doe not try hard to entertain his classroom. But that is the point. He plays the part of the Cassandra of the film; he lays bare what happens when a society has a fiscal collapse. It turns in on itself. And it is then, watching the movie a second time, I realized what the final scene is meant to explore. What happens when society itself “runs out”?

Stray Observations

• Pia’s relationship with her little sister is similar to Mads’s relationship with his sister in Reckless.
• I leave out considerable plot points in my review because I feel like it is best to let the reader make the narrative connections. The movie has a twist and I do not want to reveal it. 
• Both Broke and Reckless are beautifully shot works of art. I liked the aesthetics of Reckless better - because I noticed the use of bright color was effective against the backdrop of the dram. The color scheme in Broke is much more muted and somber. 
• Both short films serve as a kind of “Public Service Announcement”; and that is not necessarily a bad thing. 
• The classroom scene was notable for me. As I mentioned in the review the students are incredibly bored. However, I don’t think the lack of affect in the teenagers is a direct criticism of Norway’s educational system; I think it is a conceit drawn up by the filmmakers to heighten the sense of dread the film is meant to evoke. 
• One of Pia’s classmates, Mikkel, reads like the most emotionally distant character in the film; his performance in Pia’s history class is very characteristic of teenager crying out for help.
• Guns are a controversial topic; unchecked violence in society has attempted to unmoor the stability of our cities and people are on edge. This movie plays on that uncertainty and looks at it from a unique perspective.

“Broke” is screening at Cinema Village from Friday, August 16 to Thursday, August 22.

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Short Film Review: Reckless (2013)

The Short Film "Reckless" - 2013 (22 minutes, in Norwegian with English subtitles)

The 2013 Norwegian short film "Reckless" is the work of director Bjørn Erik Pihlmann Sørensen and writer Einar Sverdrup. I saw the film in 2013 and passed it off as a public service announcement about the need to rein in irresponsible teenagers. But as you will notice as I write about the movie, my views have changed a bit since I last saw it. To give you a brief rundown, the movie is about a teenage girl who has to babysit her younger child-age brother - and through a series of related events tragedy strikes. I thought maybe the movie was funded by parents who want their adolescent-aged kids to take better care of their siblings. However, I recently watched it again and the short made me think more about what message it is trying to convey. I haven't read much about the movie online nor have I talked to anyone else I know who has seen it. I am going to take a critical plunge and articulate in a flat-footed way what I think the movie might be suggesting about adolescence, sexuality, and responsibility. It's also a movie about the absence of authority.

Short Story: "Secret Incognito" (A Piece of Stones of Erasmus Juvenilia)

"Secret Incognito" is a short story by Greig Roselli (© 1996)

A YOUNG BOY DECIDED TO ENTER A FIELD.

Stone monoliths soared into the sky with shards of rusty metal and broken glass beneath.  The enigmatic structures beckoned the lad; the eight slabs of concrete called to him.  Stains of derision from his family clung.  He climbed the fence (which had a clearly visible sign stenciled in red: “NO TRESPASSING!”) to escape for a while. He penetrated quickly to elude the threatening noise of the close traffic. With quick steps, he had already entered the depths, but he wasn’t afraid. Rusted metal, a browned apple core, and aluminum scraps riddled the bare, gaseous earth. Thorn laden brambles engulfed the concrete slabs. A can of Moxie lay entrapped in one of its clutches. Concealed in the twisting vine one could find secrets and lost memories. All of a sudden it seemed an adventure to explore this vast void, to maybe find a truth. A way to prove to himself there was more to life than bitterness and homework. The collected, curly-headed youth looked upward: tall monuments to fallen bridges that once traversed mighty waters stood before him. Huge pieces of masonry, stacked one on top of another, looked enticingly climbable. He scaled it with much agility, using the large rusty appendages as an aid. A bead of sweat etched its way across the boy’s face: the first sign of effort, true gusto, true vigor.

Movie Review: In Juno (2007) Jason Reitman Attempts to Make Us Feel Genuine Emotion

Juno
(starring Ellen Page and Michael Cera)

Maybe it was director Jason Reitman's sleight of hand that actually got to me rather than genuine sentiment, but I have begun to distrust how a film makes me feel. I have acquired an impervious lamella toward film; I had seen Juno back in 2007 and found this review that I had never posted. Literature to me has become false emotional catharsis (probably comes from reading way too much film theory) but it probably actually has more to do with the fact that most films really SUCK at pulling off true human emotion. Probably the last great American movie of genuine, gut-wrench sentiment was Ordinary People. But, for the most part, American movies are saccharine sweet and two-dimensional.

After that scathing report on American Cinema, I will not actually talk about Juno
I have to admit, though, the first ten minutes did not reel me in as I thought it would, based on the Ebert review I did in fact read. The film too much reminded me of Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tennenbaums, that I was afraid that the film would never rise about the artifice of clever dialogue and impeccable mise-en-scene. A Wes Anderson flick is so obsessive compulsive in set design, that it is as if the props were meant to be fetishistic totems rather than set pieces.

Jennifer Garner's character Vanessa aspires to be the mother
of the child of a pregnant teenager (played by Ellen Page) 

I thought I was getting way too deep into the Anderson kitsch with this film, especially when the titular character (Ellen Page), a newly impregnated teen, her adolescent tummy bulging deliberately to smack the viewer in the face, chugs a cheery load of Sunny D and lashes out smart-ass comebacks to the convenience store clerk (a great cameo by Rainn Wilson). Wilson spouts out snappy one-liners when the knocked-up teen shows up to buy a home pregnancy test: “That ain't no Etch-A-Sketch. This is one doodle that can't be un-did, Homeskillet. ” Those lines alone should be placed on the Hollywood walk of fame or something.
Not to ruin anything, there are no spoilers here, but I thought the most affecting scene in the entire film is Jennifer Garner, the would-be mother, placing her head to Juno’s belly to hear the baby move. That to me made the film. Oh, if every film had such a moment of sheer beauty, I will want to embrace cinema again and perhaps re-love catharsis.

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