Young Adult Literature in the English Curriculum Today: Classroom Teachers Speak Out

ALAN Review, Summer 2006 by Gibbons, Louel C, Dail, Jennifer S, Stallworth, B Joyce

Many teachers have come to acknowledge that the reality of teaching the classics is similar to the reality of trying to teach a pig to sing: It does not work and annoys the pig. These teachers have paid attention to students' complaints about assigned works as well as questions about "Why are we reading this?" and have either replaced some of their traditional canonical selections with timeless works of young adult literature (YAL) or have expanded their literature curriculum by pairing YAL with the classics. Clearly, student engagement with a work of literature insures introspective writing, lively discussions, and perhaps most importantly-the students will keep reading, long after the required selection has been finished. Hippie sums this idea up in his statement, "The THAT of teenagers reading is more important than the WHAT" (15). The problem, however, resides in concerns about the "WHAT" of students' reading. Can young adult literature provide a means for meeting state standards in an English classroom, or is it destined to a peripheral role on classroom library shelves to reward students who have already completed more difficult, required readings?

Reviewing the session offerings at literacy and language-focused national conferences and perusing the tables of contents of language arts journals reveals an evergrowing inclination among secondary English language arts teachers toward using YAL in the classroom. Many English teachers believe that YAL offers a sophisticated reading option for addressing standards, designing relevant curricula, and engaging twenty-first century young adults in rich discussions of literature and life. For years, proponents have concluded that YAL should be integrated into the middle and high school English classroom because such literature can (a) help improve students' reading skills; (b) encourage young adults to read more books, thereby improving their abilities to read; (c) facilitate teachers' abilities to incorporate more books of interest to adolescents into the curriculum, thereby avoiding the non-reading curriculum or workbooks and lectures; and (d) support the development of an inclusive curriculum (Reed).

However, others, including a number of English teachers, believe that YAL should not occupy a prominent position in the curriculum: they believe that YAL may be useful as an option for struggling upper elementary and middle school students or as outof-school leisure reading. Teachers assuming this stance believe that such literature is not "deep enough" to include in the regular curriculum.

These conflicting views prompted us, as teacher educators, to seek methods for better understanding secondary English language arts teachers' perspectives on YAL. Our first goal was to determine which YAL titles teachers use in their curricula, and we accomplished this by surveying 142 English language arts teachers in our state. Our second goal was to illuminate the methods that secondary English teachers use to purposefully and thoughtfully integrate YAL into their curricula. To accomplish this, we interviewed secondary English teachers who participated in the study and who regularly use YAL in their classrooms.

What We Found in Classrooms

During the 2003-2004 school year, we surveyed 142 English language arts teachers employed in 72 different public secondary schools in four distinct regions of our state to identify the book-length works they include in their curriculum, as well as their reasons for including or excluding young adult literature. Since this was a statewide survey, the names of all secondary public schools in the state were retrieved from the State Department of Education. This comprehensive list was first divided into four distinct regions-North, South, East, and Westto ensure a geographically representative sample. second, the schools within these regions were categorized by school size, which was determined by student population as shown in Table 1.

Within these six class groupings for each of the four geographical regions, three schools were randomly selected, yielding a total of 72 secondary public schools.

After the selection process was complete, the principals of each school were contacted to secure their permission to contact their respective English teachers and to get the names of department chairs and/or senior English teachers. Survey packets, which included a self-addressed and stamped envelope, were then mailed to the department chairs and/or senior English teachers. To get a more varied response from schools surveyed, each department chair/senior teacher was asked to distribute a copy of the survey to a teacher for each grade level, which included grades 6-12. Completed surveys were gathered by the department chair/senior teacher and mailed to the researchers. Two-hundred and sixteen surveys were mailed, an average of three per school, and 142 completed surveys were returned, equaling a return rate of 66%. Table two details the demographics of the teachers who participated in the study.