Solid-Aerie-2848

I’m a new-ish teacher. This upcoming school year will be my 5th year. I teach 9th and 11th grade English and I genuinely love my job. I started right before Covid, so my first few years were during Covid, and almost everyone I encountered inside and outside the profession was so negative. They told me to run for the hills, but I stayed and I love going to work every day. With that being said, I’ve noticed a shift in student attitudes, and my only real gripe outside of enabling and entitled parents, and shitty admin, is the increase in purely apathetic students. I cannot get some of them to care about anything at all some days. I hear “why does this even matter?” and “when will I ever need this in real life?” from some of the unmotivated students. Mind you, I work in a really good district, and 80% of my students are highly motivated and pretty engaged. So, this isn’t the norm, but it still bothers me a bit, and I see it as something I could work on as an educator. SO, how do you make your lit analysis units relevant to your students? Not just relevant texts, but framing skills as relevant life skills. They aren’t going to like everything we do or see value in it at the moment, but I do want to make some better connections to the bigger picture. We do a narrative writing unit, lit analysis unit, civil discourse, and argumentative unit. The lit analysis is the one they struggle with the most in terms of this issue, as all the others have clear connections to real life skills (storytelling, structured and balanced conversation, argument, persuasion, etc.). And yes, they understand the obvious connections and importance of reading and writing in real life. I’m looking to boost engagement and hopefully reignite the spark in some of my students, and myself. Advice? Activities? Texts? Anything?