Literature to Help Build Community in Your Classroom

There are dozens of blog posts out there on activities and assignments that help build community with your students. I’m happy to offer those ideas, but it made me wonder: are there any texts that work to build community when you read them as a group?

I was asked this question a few months ago and I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I think it’s hard to select books that build community because so much relies on other factors, such as your student make-up, teaching style, and in-class activities.

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However, I looked through my lessons and selected a few texts that I think can help teachers build community in their classrooms.

Here was my rationale when choosing the texts. I believe that community-building includes:

• Opportunities to read aloud and dialogue about the text.
• Discussion questions that pique curiosity rather than spark division.
• Strong potential for Socratic Seminars and sharable projects.
• Topics that are relevant but not too polarizing or controversial.

I’m not opposed to literature that internalizes thoughts or questions in a controversial way. In fact, that literature is extremely important and should also be taught! That’s just not what students need all the time.

Here are some texts that can help you build a sense of community with your students.

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

You will notice a few plays on this list because they are perfect for reading aloud. A Raisin in the Sun used to be a fixture in my AP Lit class (I lost it to American Lit), and I miss it. I’ve never seen a group of students so enraged and infuriated on behalf of a fictional character as I have when Walter loses Mama’s money. Despite some polarizing characters, such as Beneatha and Walter, the play’s topics of family, love, and inclusion bring students together easily. It’s just a beautiful story, one that students love to read together.

Suggested Use: When finished, ask students to write an epilogue to the play, set two years later. After, let them share their responses. What was each character doing two years later? Were they still living in the new house on Clybourne Park? Did Ruth have her baby? These discussions are so interesting and perfect for sharing perspectives.

Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand

Another play that I love to teach is Cyrano de Bergerac. I’m not sure what it is about this play, but students adore it. It awakens even the most reluctant reader, and everyone seems to fall in love with Cyrano. His self-deprecating humor and sincere but timid love grab them at the beginning, and the play’s tragic end breaks their hearts all together. And I mean that in as good of a way as possible.

Suggested Use: A co-worker of mine assigned a project where students had to answer these two questions: What’s your nose? What’s your panache? Students could respond in an essay or an art project. Her responses were so beautiful and led to very thought-provoking discussions!

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

I have not had the experience of teaching The Nickel Boys, personally. However, I would love to watch my students read it. The discussion opportunities abound as you unpack this story. Students will instinctively fight for the protagonists at the hands of abusive “teachers,” while also explore issues of brotherhood, systematic racism, and dishonesty. The book’s shocking twist ending will yield a fun discussion as well!

Suggested Use: This is a great text to use with a Socratic Seminar. You can pose the questions yourself or let your students write them, then moderate a Socratic discussion for a grade.

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

This newer book is one of my all-time favorites. Fredrik Backman has a way of blending humor with difficult topics, such as suicide, depression, and abuse. Unlike A Man Called Ove or Beartown, Anxious People unravels like a murder mystery (although it isn’t one). Students will delight in sharing predictions as the story unfolds. Furthermore, the book includes a range of interesting characters worth analyzing.

Suggested Use: Assign a project where students work in groups to analyze a singular character from the text and explain how his or her background and choices contribute to the book’s resolution.

12 Angry Men by Reginald Rose

12 Angry Men is one of my favorite units to teach to my sophomores, specifically because of the community-building it provides. The style of the play, where we’re piecing together the crime as we read it, helps students engage with the text and dissect small details. We also study the jurors as characters and how personal bias can cloud objectivity.

Suggested Use: I always arrange my tables to look like the jury table from the movie. Then, students sit around it in juror number order (I assign parts at the start of the play). We read aloud, collecting evidence and facts about the case as we go. Every day, I ask students to discuss the evidence so far and how they would vote if they were on the jury.

The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green

I just read this book last month and I am so excited to use elements of it in teaching. One thing I’ve tried already is asking students to rate things they read as John Green does. They don’t need to justify or clarify their score, just give it a ranking and stand by their judgment. My AP Lit class did this with various Romantic poems, and they loved sharing their thoughts with each other once they finished.

Suggested Use: I would love to read an excerpt or two with students, then ask them to write and share an Anthropocene Review of their own. This text is great for taking portions and using them as a writing model.

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

I’ve never taught Bel Canto, but it popped into my head immediately when I was brainstorming this post. The premise of the book follows a diverse group of partygoers gathered in South America for the country’s vice president. At the party, a group of terrorists take power and hold the group hostage. The hostage situation goes on for months, eventually breaking down barriers between partygoers and the terrorists alike. It’s a powerful example of how we can normalize even the craziest of situations once they go on long enough.

Suggested Use: This is a great opportunity for creative writing in the form of letter writing. Have different characters write letters to their loved ones as the hostage situation goes on, showing their change of attitude or even of affections. They can also write letters to other characters. These letters can be shared or even exchanged among the class to help build a sense of growing or shifting community.

Any Shakespearean Play

You had to know I was going to slip one of these in here. I teach an entire course called Shakespearean Literature and it’s, shockingly, one of the most popular electives in my school. Each day, we read a Shakespeare play aloud. Of course, we do homework assignments, take tests, do projects, etc. But what really keeps kids coming back is the rich array of universal conflicts that Shakespeare tackles in his plays. I also try to work community-building activities into my class as we read and explore each one.

Suggested Use:

• With tragedies, I give every student a post-it and write the main characters on the white board. On their post-it, students write the names of the characters that will survive the play. (Hamlet is always a surprising bloodbath.)
• With comedies, we draw character maps on the whiteboard with color-coded ink: red is for romantic relationships, black is for work relationships, and blue is for family relationships. As the romantic relationships grow, we add lines (and character expressions!) to the maps.
• Many of my formative assignments include fun and engaging activities that can be done as a group, such as Twitter conversations for Much Ado About Nothing, a fortune cookie activity for Hamlet, and comparing movie adaptations with pretty much everything.

I’m sure I missed a lot of books on this list, so please let me know which titles you would include!