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You’ll find Meera Syal’s GCSE set text Anita and Me in English Departments across the country, though perhaps not in as many as some other popular texts.

Enough though, that Bloombury chose it as the first title for their Bloomsbury Teacher Guides series.  Its authors – who are also English teachers – Kerry Kurczij and Zara Shah have kindly shared with us how they collaborated to create this guide and what for them makes Anita and Me a special and valuable addition to any English curriculum…

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When we were first asked to consider working together to write a teacher guide for Meera Syal’s novel Anita and Me the excitement for us was twofold: one, we had the opportunity to immerse ourselves in the world of Meena, an everyday yet extraordinary hero whose life leaps and dances from the very page with a heady and authentic mix of childhood angst and epiphany; two, we could legitimately devote time to ‘big questions’ about our own English teaching practice: how WOULD we structure, resource and deliver the teaching of this superb work of literature to ensure best possible outcomes for all students?

We realised early on, we are both at our core, super fans.

Of Syal’s work? Naturally.

But also of our craft: of combining our years of planning meaningful questions for all learners to actively consider, of capitalising on teachable moments to boost cultural capital, and learning from evidence-informed and research-based practice. The real emphasis in our mind was on writing a teacher guide. So many experienced and inspirational colleagues, both in our schools and wider digital teaching communities, have had lasting impacts on the educators we are today. If we could write a guide to teaching this important literature text which provided support for a colleague new to the profession, or a different way of considering its delivery for a more established teacher, we felt we would have achieved our goal.

So, it is with a great sense of personal and professional achievement that we present to you our book and how to get the very best from it.

If you’re not yet familiar with Syal’s novel or already teaching Anita and Me to your GCSE or KS3 learners, please don’t just take our word for it that a curriculum switch-up may be due. Here’s Stuart Pryke (co-author of Ready to Teach: Macbeth, Ready to Teach: A Christmas Carol and 100 for 100: Macbeth) on why he believes it is so deserving of its place in our learners’ literary lives:

 …Shah and Kurczij’s resource is more that just a teacher guide. It is a rallying cry for more teachers to assign Anita and Me its rightful place on each individual school’s GCSE English literature curriculum, to get more teachers teaching it and more students experiencing it. It is my hope that, using this superb guide, more teachers take up this call and offer students something different through Anita and Me, a story that teaches us all about the dangers of ostracism and the power of individuality.

That power of individuality within the safety, care and belonging of our classrooms and schools is surely a core value we, as educators, all identify with, and strive for daily with our students and within our own teams. Anita and Me, the story of Meena, a young girl of Indian heritage growing up in the fictional village of Tollington in the 1960s, delves quickly, deeply and sharply into themes of loss of childhood innocence, injustice, racism and belonging. Young readers today are propelled headlong into a world of communities, of in-groups and outsiders, of extended families, of friendships – brim-full of the types of politics and hostilities, that may, sadly, be all too familiar to them and their own lived experiences, hence our inclusion of a ‘Handle with Care’ section for teachers in the guide. As classroom practitioners ourselves, we recognise the vital role we play in guiding and supporting young people through valuable, necessary and meaningful (and sometimes planned) discussions about the difficulties they face, and that clear, considered thinking and communication is key. Literature such as Anita and Me provides the perfect stimulus for such important work.

How teachers choose to use the guide and the accompanying slides is entirely up to them: after all, autonomy and personality are two of our most important professional tools in engaging learners and feeling ownership of learning material! A department looking to achieve better consistency in their delivery, however, or a colleague entirely new to the text, may opt to read the guide in its entirety before planning to teach. Depending on the number of lessons available to teach the text, colleagues can decide to shape their lessons around chronological shared reading, retrieval, direct instruction, and longer answer ‘how’ questions, or they can ‘flip’ the learning using some of the ‘what’ questions as pre-reading activities to check for understanding. Towards the end of a course, or as part of interleaving/spaced practice, previous chapters can be returned to via ‘why’ questions as revision tasks or starter activities. Exam practice for all boards is also facilitated throughout each chapter with extract-based analysis modelled.

Ultimately then our hope for the guide is that it empowers others.

To dare to teach the text? Definitely.

To lean into the challenge of supporting our young people in discussing and writing academically and with confidence about a text that matters and resonates? For sure.

We were fortunate enough to work together in producing the guide; we sincerely hope you experience some of the same joy and learning in collaborating with your learners and teams, too.

If you are daring to teach Anita and Me for GCSE English this year and think this guide may assist you have a read below.