English has ALWAYS been my favorite subject.
Well one of my favorite things to read in High School, and in general, was Shakespeare. I joined that class and got an A in it, cause I love me some Shakespeare. But that's me, and I understand Shakespeare isn't for everyone.
Hellz yeah.
Well I definitely liked reading Shakespeare in junior year. Especially if you get into it. Teacher would bring in his prized CD's from the "college something theater". Whereas the rest of the class read it terribly or with no feeling to it, pausing every word,(yknow, that odd way some people read? "And-Then-the-person-etc..." ) I liked putting passion and emotion into it. (not too much of course,) but properly read it! with tone inflections, voice raising, all of that!
Myths and fairy tales too. and short stories.
for real, those books of short stories? they have some of the best stories ever, IMO. teacher always wanted the handout packets back, but I would always keep em cuz the stories were good.
as for a book or two, a suggestion, Ray Bradbury if you want something odd, yet very well written. Personal favorite of mine is "Something Wicked This Way Comes" (even has a movie to its name as well! So you could read the book, then near the end of the course, show the movie or something. That was always something I enjoyed. after reading the book, near the end of the course, the teacher would show us the movie based on it, and we analyzed the differences and how well it was portrayed.)
Poetry was always nice as well. Hmm. Yeah. Shakespeare was always cool to read though. That was probably my favorite.
Well, since it's an English class, and since you're into creative writing, I feel that it'd be best to find out what the students are into, and then have them creatively write about it.
Well, two of the teachers I had Freshman year in HS, had us write stories. One of them assigned it once, for a homework assignment. I tried to come up with a horror story. Id NEVER done something like that, (since I don't like the horror genre,) and looking back on it, it maybe wasn't all that "scary" but it was fun trying to come up with something creepy!
Actually, the second teacher I had Freshman year, had us go into pairs and write a story between us. Holy hell, lol, me and one of my good friends teamed up and came up with the CRAZIEST story, trippiest most ridiculous thing ever written. I swear it must have had a character from at least every major work out there, Pokemon, Star wars, you name it. God damn did we laugh or asses off.
In fact, lol, the teacher never returned it! We questioned him about it a few times, but he kept it!
If I were a teacher, I'd try to connect with the students. I've always found that if I like the teacher, I'll actually put more effort into the class.
Amen there. Its always easier for a teacher to actually teach their students if the students feel a connection. like the teacher- is "at their level" that he can understand them, and knows how to act accordingly. Hah, Im actually good friends with about 3 English teachers and the English AP! (One of them ran an anime club even.) With 2 of them, I would often talk about video games and stuff, the one who started the anime club was actually a big comic book buff, so we talked about that as well alot.
teacher student connection is definitely IMO, a must.