So that means I have to get creative! The result is that my favorite short stories to teach might be ones you’ve never heard of before! Since I don’t teach an age group younger than sophomores, my students have already read many of the most famous short stories: “The Monkey’s Paw,” “The Telltale Heart,” “The Lottery,” “The Most Dangerous Game,” “The Gift of the Magi,” etc.

This list might surprise you-not because of what is listed, but because of what isn’t. I’d like to share with you a list of my favorite short stories to teach to high-schoolers.

Broken Dreams: The Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, and To Kill a Mockingbird.Slavery and Freedom: Frederick Douglass, Tom Sawyer, and Huck Finn.The American Imagination: Moby Dick, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Transcendentalists.Forming a Nation: The Last of the Mohicans, Washington Irving, and the Founding Fathers.Puritan Life: The Scarlet Letter, The Crucible, and the Salem Witch Trials.The New World: Natives, Explorers, and Pilgrims.How To Setup an American Literature Course.King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.World Mythology: Tales from Around the World.Roman Mythology: The Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses.Greek Mythology: The Trojan War, the Iliad, and the Odyssey.Ancient Mythology: Gilgamesh and Egyptian Mythology.George Orwell: Animal Farm, 1984, and Planet of the Apes.Utopia and Dystopia: The Sword in the Stone, Gulliver's Travels, and Robinson Crusoe.The Canterbury Tales, Robin Hood, and Everyday Life in the Middle Ages.Heaven and Hell: Dante's Inferno, the Medieval Church, and Legends of the Saints.Knights, Chivalry, King Arthur, and the Knights of the Round Table.Beowulf, Old English, and Anglo-Saxon Culture.Ancient Rome: Roman mythology, Julius Caesar, and Spartacus.Ancient Greece: Greek mythology, Oedipus Rex, and Antigone.Ancient Civilizations: Mesopotamia and Egypt.Improving Reading Comprehension with Script-Stories.Reaching Olympus: How Script-Stories Brought Mythology To Life.How To Use Script-Stories in the Classroom.Script-Stories: Making Reading an Experience Instead of a Struggle.

Short stories to write about for school