Making Valentine's Day Meaningful for Secondary ELA

How do you make Valentine’s Day meaningful in the secondary English Language Arts classroom? Secondary students don’t usually celebrate with parties or cards, but teachers can still make it a fun day by using texts with themes about love. This also ensures that students will continue to learn important content. I have my favorite texts to read, but recently I asked other English teachers and bloggers to share their favorite poems, stories, and nonfiction texts for the holiday, too. 

Whether you have a romantic, cynical, or practical view of love, you'll find something to match your interests with their wonderful recommendations:

The Chaser by John CollierThis is a perfect short story to teach around Valentine's Day. The story follows a young man named Alan who is desperate to make a woman named Diana fall in love with him. So desperate, in fact, that he is willing to use a love potion! Students always eat the story up, but what I love most about it is that it requires students to use inferential thinking to fully understand the plot. I also follow up with a fun post-reading activity called “Abby and Andrew’s Advice Column” where students give Alan romantic advice from a male and female perspective.
-Bonnie from Presto Plans

Pablo Neruda Poems

After I stood in Neruda’s home and looked out over the South Pacific as he did to write, I saw why students catch his passion for poetry, life and love. For Valentine’s Day, they listen to favorite verses that earned Neruda’s 1971 Nobel Prize. They enjoy Valentine’s Day through Neruda’s eyes in: 1). poetry published for a class collection. 2). lyrics composed from multiple intelligence strengths, and 3). interactive tasks completed from Neruda’s viewpoint. Lessons include assessment criteria, two-footed questions to tap into Valentine themes, and activities to engage students’ unique interests - more in a spirit of Valentine’s playful celebration of verse than a fear of poetic forms that hold some writers back. 

By Ellen Weber from Brain Based Tasksfor Growth Mindset

  

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare
Nothing is more appealing to many high school teens than illicit love. No doubt, children and their parents have disagreed about boyfriends and girlfriends since the time of the Ancient Greeks. This conflict has been the theme for innumerable texts, from classic Shakespeare plays, to young adult fiction, to an article in The New York Times. In this lesson, students read an excerpt of the play and connect their reading of A Midsummer Night’s Dream to an article, “Modern Love- Breaking our Parents’ Rules for Love,” about a real-world couple facing disapproval from their parents. The article makes relevant connections, and the lesson culminates in a writing activity selected from a menu of writing options.

By Kim from OCBeachTeacher

Annabel Lee by Edgar Alan Poe
In Middle School, students are fascinated by Poe as an eerie, dark and mysterious author. So imagine their shock when they realize the same author could write a poem like "Annabel Lee"! I bring this poem out during Valentine "season" because I enjoy their opinions on "true love" and whether the narrator genuinely has this love or if he just thinks he does. 

To accomplish this we study the poem as a bell-ringer activity where we focus on specific stanzas over the course of a few weeks. While we naturally study tone, reading skills like main idea, author's purpose, and inference, how to interpret the messages, and even some conventions, the best part is the discussion of open-ended questions like:

· Can envy destroy true love?
· What is true love?
· Can you love someone too much?

In many students' lives, relationships seem to be gone in a flash so watching students formulate their own definitions of true love based on thoughtful discussion is the cherry on top.

By Lisa from Mrs. Spangler in the Middle

Pyramus and Thisbe from Ovid's Metamorphoses
"Pyramus and Thisbe" is the ultimate story of forbidden love. My students enjoy this one because they usually haven't heard of it. Plus, it's short, has an exciting twist, and is laden with rebellion and desire. I enjoy incorporating this poem in mythology units (it's a perfect example of how myths explain the origin of something), during a study of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet or A Midsummer Night's Dream (they always think it's scandalous that Shakespeare most likely stole his plot from Ovid), within poetry units (it contains student-friendly verse that doesn't intimidate students or bore them) and around Valentine's Day! We focus on interpreting symbolism, analyzing theme, and making connections to other movies and stories.
By Melissa from The Reading and Writing Haven

St. Valentine's Day Massacre from The New York Times

While love poems are great, sometimes students—and their

teachers—can use a break from the emphasis of romance that comes with Valentine’s Day. Reading The New York Times article about the entirely-unromantic St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, perpetuated by the infamous Chicago gangster, Al Capone, is a good way to still include a timely holiday-related activity and also practice reading informational text. The text is long—about 2,000 words—so reading questions can help guide students in their task. Finish off with critical thinking questions and class discussion about the legacy of the St. Valentine’s Day massacre and of Capone!
By Ms. Dickson from High School English on a Shoestring Budget

This Year's Valentine by Philip Appleman
In 2003 as American forces prepared to invade Iraq, poets began a resistance movement using poetry as their weapon. The Poets Against The War website was inundated with

contributions from around the world, and before long, 13,000 poems filled its pages. Philip Appleman and his poem "This Year's Valentine" supported not only the resistance movement but also neatly fit a major theme of the month of the buildup: Valentine’s Day. This poem, despite its alarming content, is a joy to teach since students find the description and stark contrasts surprising and refreshing, and, as one of my teen students put it, “Not that typical overly mushy love stuff that makes me want to gag.” Additionally, the poem allows you to show students that creative voices have the capability to produce unity among those who support a common cause and that those combined voices can, perhaps, effect change.
By Maryann from Secondary Strategies

Why Domestic Violence Victims Don't Leave

TedTalk by Leslie Morgan Steiner
In high school, our students can get obsessed with love, relationships, and dangerously close to defining their self-worth by the person they're dating. Leslie Morgan-Steiner's TedTalk "Why Domestic Violence Victims Don't Leave" is a chilling and powerful video to share with students. I've used it in my after school Women's Leadership Academy for open

discussion. It's also a great video to stimulate research into other social justice issues and writing. It was shocking to hear students discuss the ways in which they've witnessed this at home or in relationships - so be sure to give your social workers a heads up and proceed with caution. This Valentine's Day, take this opportunity to shed some light on the dangers in the dating world and empower your students to get out of bad situations and make smart choices!

By Amanda from MudandInk Teaching

Not sure if one of the ideas from above will work in your classroom?  Then you may also want to check out some of these other love-themed texts: 

Quarantine by Eavan Boland

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18
Love Song For Lucinda by Langston Hughes
The Scarlet Ibis by James Hurst
Edmund Spenser's Sonnet XXX

The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry

How Do I Love Thee? by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Valentine for Ernest Mann by Naomi Shihab Nye

Flirtation by Rita Dove
To My Dear and Loving Husband by Anne Bradstreet
The Lady or the Tiger by Frank Stockton

What texts would you add to the lists above?  Please share in the comments!