Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, is our anchor text for a unit of study examining the archetypal hero’s journey, which speaks to teenagers’ process of self-discovery (Campbell 1972). It is also the book I am using to teach students how to question and visualize. Our essential question is, “How do trials in our journey through high school shape us?” We use that question as we talk about Speak and our own high school lives.

Kelly Gallagher notes in Deeper Reading, “if we simply assign reading instead of teaching students how to read, we’ll get poor reading” (2004, 7).