Textual Lineages

I just wrapped up my first full week of full-time student teaching, where I’ve been responsible for designing all the lesson plans and learning experiences. There were definitely some bumps in the road—mostly around pacing and lesson structure—but I wanted to share and reflect on what I felt was the highlight of the week.

What I’m most proud of from this first week is the “Textual Lineages” assignment. This idea originally comes from Alfred Tatum, and I encountered it in grad school through the work of Gholdy Muhammad. My “Teaching Reading” professor, Laurie Hahn-Ganser, also opened our course with a similar assignment. I remember really enjoying the process of doing it and also seeing the responses from my classmates.

Assignment Description: This time around, the assignment took this form:

Assignment Sheet

We began with a brainstorming session where students listed as many books, TV shows, movies, or songs as they could—counting all of these as texts(I also attempted a short mini-lesson and discussion on what “counts” as a text and what we can study in English class, but it kind of fell flat 🤷).

From their brainstormed lists, students selected five of their favorite texts. For each one, they wrote a short 3–4 sentence reflection responding to these prompts:

• What is the text about?

• When did you find it?

• Why do you like it?

• What does it mean to you?

Student Engagement and Takeaways: Overall, I was really happy with how it went. During class, the energy was high—students were hyped, swapping recommendations, and bonding over shared favorites. There were echos of, “OHH, Have you seen ___? It’s so good!” or “I LOVE ___!” which was awesome to see.

Reading their written responses gave me such a rich window into their lives. Given the low-stakes nature of the assignment and the opportunity to write about media they’re genuinely passionate about, their personalities really came through. It also helped me see that so many of them already have a strong grasp of and appreciation for narrative and storytelling—something that’s not always visible, and is easy to forget about kids. I learned so much about them through this activity that I wouldn’t have otherwise.

One of my favorite parts was seeing some of the quieter students open up through their writing. This assignment seemed to unlock something, even in students I haven’t had many conversations with. Some of them wrote more for this than I’ve ever seen them write in the months I’ve been in the classroom.

Even though there were some growing pains with pacing and lesson design this week, this assignment left me feeling deeply satisfied and excited for what’s to come. It reminded me of why I enjoy doing this.