I just got a job teaching English literature part time at an international senior high school

In the US at least high school "English" can cover translated literature.

I think I'll try to stick to English originals. The kids will already be exposed to more world literature in their other classes than students back home.

Maybe Bartleby the Scrivener? Melville is probably the peak of American lit, but Moby-Dick might be a bit too long for the average high school student. Exposing them to quality literature is important, but you have to make sure to choose things they'll actually read. There's no point to assigning it if they're only going to look at SparkNotes.

Apology of Socrates (by Plato)
Metamorphosis by Kafka
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Portrait Dorian Grey by Wilde
A collection of stories of Edgar Alan Poe
Robinson Crusoe by Defoe
A tale of two cities by Dickens
Henry IV first part by Shakespeare
Hamlet by Shakespeare
Notes from underground by Dostoievsky
A collection of stories of Kafka
Ficciones by Borges

*The books are on internet.

Ok, some English language suggestions:
A Good Man is Hard to Find (either the collection or just this short story)
The Yellow Wallpaper
Consider the Lobster
Kids usually really like Vonnegut
The Third Policeman is a fun read and a good length, but I'm not sure if it would be too advanced

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man if you get an advanced class

Seconding Frankenstein and Portrait of Dorian Grey in particular

phaedrus....

LOLITA

>Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Very strong consider.
>Portrait Dorian Grey by Wilde
Inappropriate subtext.
>A collection of stories of Edgar Alan Poe
Might assign a story plus "The Raven."
>Robinson Crusoe by Defoe
Nah.
>A tale of two cities by Dickens
Nah.
>Henry IV first part by Shakespeare
>Hamlet by Shakespeare
I have to talk to the drama teacher, but Shakespeare is a must, but maybe not Henry. Maybe Hamlet (3), Macbeth (2), and Romeo and Juliette (1). I'd like to do a modern play as well, though.

>A Good Man is Hard to Find (either the collection or just this short story)
Strong consider.
>The Yellow Wallpaper
Strong consider.
>Consider the Lobster
Nah.
>Vonnegut
What's his best novel?
>The Third Policeman is a fun read and a good length, but I'm not sure if it would be too advanced
Haven't read it so can't say. I'll look into it.
>A Portrait of the Artist
Nah. Maybe "The Dead."

Thanks!

>Bartleby the Scrivener
Strong consider. Moby Dick is waaaay too much.

SHORT STORIES

Hemingway - A Clean Well-Lighted Place / Cat In The Rain / Hills Like White Elephants / The Killers

Carver - Fat / Cathedral / What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Cheever - The Swimmer / The Enormous Radio

Updike - "Pigeon Feathers" (Collection)

Flannery O'Connor
"A Good Man" will be the obvious suggestion but there are many others. "Good Country People" has plenty to get your teeth into.

POETRY

Robert Browning's dramatic monologues are
always fun, with the narrators telling us more about themselves than they intend (or even understand).
Most obvious choice:"My Last Duchess".

Dylan Thomas has a nice range from plain to impenetrable, so you can pick something appropriate for the audience.
"If my head hurt a hair's foot"
"Once it was the colour of saying"
"Lament"
"Fern Hill"
"In my craft or sullen art" is a perfect example of syllabic verse.

Frost is good for "plain" poetry; Wallace Stephens for "not so much".

all shakespeare all the time

>Inappropriate subtext.

I'm not touching a book about pederasty with a ten foot pole.

Thanks. Great suggestions.

Start with the greeks

Despite some of Oscar Wilde's proclivities, Dorian Gray's (subtextual) homosexuality is entirely between adults of basically similar age. Try The History Boys......

Hypersphere and TLOTIAT

Don't try and force high school kids to read difficult literature, they won't be interested and it will just make your job harder.
If possible let them read popular modern fiction and throw in just enough classics to satisfy the school administration/parents.

> a tale of two cities
Don’t do this OP. Suffered it in high school, not worth it at all

Did you miss the whole "youth" thing?

I imagine Veeky Forums won't recommend any popular books out of pride but I won't just be assigning classics. The kids will also get to choose their own books for a few readings.

JESUS CHRIST MY FIRST UNI WORKSHOP FOR THIS YEAR WAS AWFUL. ALL YOU WHO WANT TO BE "ENGLISH TEACHERS" ARE SO SHIT, SHITTING UP MY COURSE.
>Be first day back, it's second year.
>I'm doing an English course about a new "anthropocene" topic in literature. It's about climate change and literature basically, and we had to do some exercises in class. We read like maybe a page of excerpts from a poor debate by New York Times or something.
>One of the girls in my group, who had been studying for like five years now in music, stalled and kept reading her paragraph. About seven sentences or so: how fiction is a psychological incentive for us to do things in real life. She didn't understand it, just kept repeating,
>"It evokes strong emotion or something. I don't know, I get it, but I like, don't."
>I said something like "it's easier to understand the debate if you have seen a movie like Snowpiercer. They talk about it in the debate."
>I tell the group it's about an ice age and all the rich people live in a train, it includes stuff about class society.
>Some dork who did a teaching degree or some shit says, "My favourite climate change movie was the one with the squirrel and the acorn..."
>The girls laugh and say: "ICE AGE xD?"
>I just look into space autistically.
>All the responses are something similar to the first girl: shallow opinions that don't reiterate the excerpted paragraphs of the debate. It even tells us to bring up other forms of fiction, and how they address anxieties - but no one does.
>It's my turn, I've written down notes, where no one else has.
>I say that fiction is a way of self realisation, and that it does reinforce views, bringing it to the public psyche. I talk about how dystopian fiction is a good start for new readers, because it addresses anxieties they might have or didn't realise they have. I talk for a bit longer than everyone else.
>No one says anything. They responded to everyone but me.
>Later on, the same girl says she might drop out of the course to do a course with Harry Potter on the reading list. The others say that sounds better, keep going on about how 'boring' all the English courses are.
>Tfw she's doing English because she wants to teach it to high school kids, even though she did an entire degree in music, she can take 12 units of English to teach at high school level, without being able to parse a small excerpt.
>I'm the first one out the door when class is over, and I have now written this scathing piece.

Eternal young looks.. must be the pedo agenda...

If you do Shakespeare, try to pair it with a text that borrows from it a bit. I don't love Huxley's 'Brave New World', but I did it for high school, and was able to relate it to the Shakespeare I already read. I think picking up on intertextuality will make kids interested, maybe. That was just me though.

I bet it’s in Japan

Have you thought about a Tennessee Williams play, for that modern all-American feel? I'm sure you've considered far more than I could recommend but I'd venture it.

And Slaughterhouse Five or Breakfast of Champions for Vonnegut. But if you're not doing Dorian Gray then no way in hell you'd be okay doing Vonnegut. Inappropriate foretext.

Signifying rappers by DFW.

Seriously, I was assigned Dorian Grey in 8th grade and no one felt personally molested or uncomfortable.

Lots of kids in high school want to fuck older students or teachers anyway, as long as they find them attractive. It's something everyone thinks about.

Only problem I could see is if some of the boys are unsure about homosexuality or something.

THE SONNET

This is a very good topic to cover:

a) Nice, convenient length. Fits on one page, fairly easily learned by heart.
b) Has a nice mixture of aesthetic and intellect content (sonnets usually based around some particular "idea" / "argument" / "extended metaphor").
c) MANY good examples to pick from, of varying difficulty.

Almost everyone has had a crack at the form, from the Elizabethans to the present day.

Shakespeare - obvious
Milton, Wordsworth
Rupert Brooke
W.H.Auden - Two good sonnet-sequences, "The Quest" and "From China"
Dylan Thomas "Among those killed in the dawn raid was a man aged a hundred"
Robert Graves "Spoils of War" is a (very good) non-rhyming sonnet. Shows how you can "bend" the form but as long as you don't bend it too much, it's still recognizable.
etc

(OK, these are all British, but you can find many Americans writing sonnets without any difficulty.)

Jonathan Edwards
John Milton
TS Eliot

L'anomie

Dress it up as much as you'd like, you're the exact same species of pleb as they are for immediately bringing up snowpiercer.

Make sure your books have some sort of cohesiveness. Like don't just randomly pick books because "they're good". Try to build a thesis out of the books you choose.

I brought it up because it was mentioned in the debate in question. Can you read?

Animal Farm is a good one cause its quick and easy to read but still has depth and opportunities for lots of discussion and sheeeit