American Texts, World(ly) Context

For more than thirty years I have taught high school English and history, and every day of the thousands I have spent in the classroom my students have taught me in return. Talk about life-long learning! Here’s my latest challenge, one which I hope you—whoever you are; wherever you teach, study, and learn; whenever you have a moment—can help me meet.

I’m currently directing an international studies program and, within it, teaching the junior English component of its curriculum. After two years of world literature and history in our program, juniors focus on American Studies before again returning to the world during their senior year. Seeking to build on what our students have learned during their freshman and sophomore years, my teaching colleagues and I endeavor to make American Studies more “worldly.” The challenge we face at nearly every curricular turn, however, is how to make not just connections between American Studies and the world, but connections that truly matter. In other words, how do we create and then employ a vibrant, global context for our instruction in American literature and history?

So that you know more about what I have done and am doing, I have linked to the syllabus of texts for my course, essential questions, and a multi-faceted research project that I recently created and which my students have gamely undertaken. I have also linked to the program I direct, The Glenbrook Academy, as well as two organizations that support my daily work in and out of the classroom—the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the International Studies Schools Association (ISSA).

As teacher, as student, as learner, what do you think? And what do you do that will lend a more worldly context to my students’ and my daily skirmishes with American texts?