Field Notes

Teaching All Quiet on the Western Front to modern teenagers felt a little bit like trying to emotionally connect exhausted raccoons to a sepia-toned war documentary while they dissociated under fluorescent lighting. And listen: I understand that All Quiet on the Western Front is objectively an important book. I appreciate the anti-war messaging. I appreciate the empathy-building potential of forcing American teenagers to sit inside the perspective of young German soldiers dur

One of the hardest things about teaching close reading is convincing students that this is not some weird academic performance they will never use again after high school. Because honestly? A lot of them think literary analysis is basically just: “Find symbolism nobody asked for.” “Pretend curtains are depression.” “Write paragraphs like a haunted Victorian thesaurus.” And I get why they think that. A lot of students have spent years being rewarded for sounding analytical ins