Teaching How Language Reveals Character

In this Voices Inside Schools essay, a veteran teacher shares her reflections on a classroom unit entitled “How Language Reveals Character.” The goal of the unit is to help adolescents read and write critically through an exploration of literary characters’ language. Beginning by drawing on adolescents’ fascination with one another, Metzger first asks students to analyze the language of their peers as an entry point to thinking about how language and character may be connected. The unit then moves on to ask students to transfer their analytic skills to the world of fiction and how language reveals character in literary texts. Metzger focuses on life inside her classroom, how the unit is taught, how students respond, and how teachers can expand on the concepts of language and character through additional reading and writing activities.

Margaret Metzger is an English teacher at Brookline High School in Brookline, Massachusetts. Although she qualifies for retirement, she continues to enjoy classroom teaching full-time. She is presently codirector of a mentoring program called Teachers Mentoring Teachers. She has written articles for The English Journal, Phi Delta Kappan, Harvard Educational Review, Teacher Magazine, and others. Two of her most recent articles include “Learning to Discipline” (2002) and “Teaching Reading: Beyond the Plot” (1998). She also has taught courses in the graduate education programs at Simmons College, Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Brown University. In 2005 she won the Caverly Award for most outstanding teacher at Brookline High School.