The impact of Toni Morrison is almost beyond measure.

For many years I taught The Bluest Eye in the second term of Junior English. Chris Gilde taught The Color Purple in the senior year, another incredible novel about the black experience in the United States, and a provocative read, a beautiful read. He played jazz and introduced other cultural elements relevant to the novel.

A tall door rises up into this nothing; its hardware is heavy, secure. No bell invites your hand. So you stand there, perhaps, or move away and, later, sticking your hand in your pocket, you find a key that you know (or hope) fits the lock. Even before the tumblers fall back you know you will find what you hoped to find: a word or two that turns the “not enough” into more; the line or sentence that inserts itself into the nothing. With the right phrase, this sense becomes murky, becomes lit, differently lit. Through that door is a kind of freedom that can frighten governments, sustain others, and rid whole nations of confusion. More important, however, is that the writer who steps through that door with the language of his or her own intellect and imagination enters uncolonized territory, which she can claim as right- fully her own — for a while at least.—The Source of Self-Regard by Toni Morrison

I wish I could have taught Beloved in the senior year, but I never did. Instead I did my best to introduce the voices I never heard in my own k-12 education—the stories of women and and people of color, Native peoples and immigrants from around the world.

When I was allowed, I taught stories and novels and poetry from many continents. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe was life-altering for me and I enjoyed teaching it. If I read it aloud, even less attentive, less skilled students were drawn in. I would have liked to teach the Indian novel Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya, but did not find an opportunity to add it to the curriculum.

The Junior year was traditionally focused on, and at first mandated to focus on U.S. literature. The novels and memoirs I tried were not always successful. Ceremony was a challenge, but A Yellow Raft in Blue Water and Black Swan Green were great favorites. I taught and love still Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. My students loved that novel only if I read it aloud. Bright students generally skim more often than read and lost patience for jargon and slang if they had to read it on their own. They had more patience with Their Eyes Were Watching God. For many years students loved The Catcher in the Rye, though I never did quite love it. Ironically, The Bluest Eye was harder and painful, but it was the one novel I was likely to hear about later. Students in college often wrote their thanks for the introduction to Toni Morrison.

I taught four to six novels every year to high school students, at least a dozen short stories, newspaper articles, a month of poems in the spring, and writing, writing about everything. Students completed four to five essays in multiple drafts each term. They wrote an on-demand essay each week. We wrote fiction and memoir and poetry.

An easy class only teaches students they are weak. Demanding their best reveals how grand their best can be.