Required reading...

I have read four books in the last two and a half weeks. Now, before you think I'm being a lazy slug, let me say that they were all for work. All young adult novels that we are thinking about making part of the freshman curriculum next year.

As I read, I have to ask myself, "How would I teach this book?" One of the big "Hmms..." I've run across thus far is the presence of questionable material in all of them. Nothing terrible or illegal and nothing that goes on for more than a line or is mentioned in more than a passing reference (sometimes just alluded to), but when I'm standing in front of my class, trying to get them to refocus from the line, "But now she won't even let you touch her" from The Miracle Worker (the Helen Keller story) which obviously has nothing sexual about it but still their minds went there, I have to wonder how I'll get them to overlook the very brief mention of masterbation or a prostitute or something like that.

Haven't quite figured out what to do with that besides giving the meanest "teacher look" I can muster and insisting we move on to the actual point of the story. They didn't cover any of this in teacher training...