Hello everyone!  Welcome back to the podcast. 

It’s the end of September so by now, everyone is back in school, and I hope your school year is off to a great start. It’s always interesting this time of year because our school calendars can look so different. Some of you have only been back for a week or two, while others are already looking ahead to fall break.

Today is a fifth-Tuesday bonus episode. We just wrapped up our back-to-school series, and before we move into our fall episodes, I thought I’d use this bonus episode to share something I’ve been working on for almost a year—a new product line called Voices in Lit.

But before I tell you about that, I want to set the stage a bit. 

There are certain skills in ELA that we come back to again and again. Point of view, dialogue, mood, conflict, imagery—our students have probably encountered many of these before they ever walk into our classes. And that’s not necessarily bad. These are skills students need to revisit as the texts they read and the writing they do become more complex.

But one of the things I’ve noticed is that students can get pretty good at practicing these skills in isolation. They can identify the point of view or find an example of imagery. What can be harder is seeing how those pieces fit into the bigger picture—why an author makes certain choices and what those choices actually do within a piece of writing.

And that’s really what led me to create Voices in Lit. It’s an original podcast series created specifically for middle and high school students, where classic authors help students explore the craft behind the literature they read.

I wanted students to experience these skills in a way that felt different from another teacher explanation or another lesson that felt a lot like something they had already done before.

When we teach author’s craft, we spend a lot of time asking students to look at the choices an author makes from the reader’s perspective. We ask students to identify the mood, analyze point of view, find examples of imagery, or think about what the dialogue reveals about a character. All of that is important. But what if we shifted that perspective a little?

What if students could hear those same ideas talked about from the author’s point of view? Not just where imagery appears in a piece of writing, but why a writer might use it in the first place. Not just how dialogue develops a character, but what a writer is thinking about when deciding how two characters should speak to one another.

That became the idea behind Voices in Lit. Each episode is a fictional interview with an author, built around a specific literary focus. The interviews are based on research into the author, their life, their writing, and their works, but they’re written and recorded as conversations designed for middle and high school students.

I also made a very intentional choice to build Voices in Lit around classic authors.

These are writers whose works have stood the test of time and continue to show up in the texts we use. Our students may encounter a Poe short story, a Dickinson poem, or an excerpt from Austen in a textbook. 

But for students, these authors can sometimes feel pretty far removed from their world. They may know them mostly as a name attached to a story, poem, or excerpt written a hundred or more years ago.

One of the things I like about the interview format is that it gives us a chance to bring that author to life a little. Students get some sense of the person behind the writing—their experiences, the way they thought about their work, and the decisions they made as writers. 

So when they hear Jane Austen talk about dialogue or Edgar Allan Poe talk about creating mood, they get a little more context for the writer behind the work and how that particular element fits into their writing.

And I think it’s important here to point out that students don’t need to have read anything by these authors before listening. I didn’t want teachers to have to teach a particular story, poem, or novel before they could use an episode.

When a specific work comes up in the interview, students are given enough background to understand what the author is talking about and how it connects to the literary focus. So you can use an episode whether that author is already part of your curriculum or you simply want to reinforce a skill you’re teaching. 

And since we’re heading into October, Edgar Allan Poe is a great example of how I see this working in the classroom. Poe already finds his way into a lot of our lessons this time of year, and the literary focus for his Voices in Lit episode is mood.

Mood is one of those concepts students have probably worked with before. They know that a writer can create a certain feeling for the reader, but with Poe, we have such a natural opportunity to take that idea further. His writing gives us a chance to think about how word choice, imagery, rhythm, and other decisions work together to create the atmosphere we associate with so much of his work.

That’s what students hear Poe talk about during the interview. The lesson includes a short reading that introduces students to both Poe and mood before they listen, and then the guided notes give them a place to capture some of the ideas they’re hearing along the way. When they’ve finished listening, they have an opportunity to work with mood themselves, first as readers and then in a short piece of their own writing. 

And accessing the podcast itself is simple. The resource includes a direct link, so there’s no special program and nothing you need to download. As long as you have internet access, you can listen.

So if Edgar Allan Poe is already somewhere in your October plans, this could be a fun way to bring him into the classroom. Maybe it becomes part of your introduction to Poe, or a different way to approach mood before you move into one of his stories.

And Poe is just one example. As I’ve been building Voices in Lit over the past year, I’ve been looking for authors and literary focuses that make sense together—something about that writer’s work that gives students a natural way to think more deeply about the skill.

As I’ve continued building the series, one of the things I’ve really enjoyed is deciding which literary focus makes the most sense for each writer. With Jane Austen, dialogue was a natural fit because so much happens through the conversations between her characters. 

For O. Henry, I chose irony because he often creates situations where what characters intend and what actually happens turn out to be very different.

And with Charles Dickens, I chose theme because his stories give us so much to work with when we think about larger ideas like social class, poverty, generosity, and how people treat one another.

The pairings are intentional. I want the author and their writing to give students a strong example of the literary focus we’re asking them to think about.

There are currently 12 Voices in Lit resources, and I have more planned. As I continue adding to the series, I’ll keep looking for those connections between an author’s work and the skills we already teach.

I’ve really enjoyed creating this series and finding new ways to bring authors and their writing into the classroom. I hope this gives you another option when you’re looking for a different way to approach some of those familiar skills with your students.

If Voices in Lit sounds like something you’d like to try with your class, I’d love for you to explore the full collection. And with October right around the corner, Edgar Allan Poe and mood might be a great place to start.

I’ll put a link to the full Voices in Lit collection in the show notes so you can see all of the authors and literary focuses currently available.

Thanks for spending this bonus episode with me today. I’ll be back next week with our regular episode, and until then, I hope you have a great week.