What's the Big Idea? Integrating Young Adult Literature in the Middle School

Abstract

that middle and high school students should also have significant opportunities to explore the ever-growing body of young adult literature. Ted Hipple states emphatically, Literature written for young adults is fine literature, about themes that are universal, with quality that is stunning. Such literature merits-and rewards-attention (14). Similarly, Barbara Samuels reminds us that adolescent literature provides a perfect vehicle to help adolescents cross the bridge between literature for children and adult classics (29). In my dual roles as an English education professor and a public middle school language arts staff developer in the heart of New York City, I have had the opportunity to learn a great deal from preservice and inservice teachers about teaching and learning with urban adolescents. For the past two years, I have focused my research on one question: How can middle and high school teachers successfully integrate young adult literature into the curriculum? In an attempt to answer this question for myself, for the preservice teachers I teach, and for the inservice teachers I work with, I have visited the classrooms of more than a dozen middle and high school English language arts teachers in the last three years. In this article, I share the stories of three New York City middle school teachers in whose language arts classrooms I have been spending a great deal of time.