Sean Mehegan
English Teacher, Grades 9 & 10
Laguna Beach Unified School District
Laguna Beach Unified School District
English Teacher, Grades 9 & 10
I teach at Laguna Beach High School.
I enjoy sharing my passion for literature and language with my kids. I try to remember that some kids view English with the same disdain and fear that I felt for math and science when I was a high school, so I feel that my job is to make English class just a little bit less painful; it's MY job to try to create lifetime readers, and to avoid teaching in such a pedantic manner that I cause my students to hate reading and writing. A lifetime reader will enjoy a fuller, richer life.
Here's the first step for high school students
Read, read, read. Reading is the best way to understand good writing and to enhance your critical thinking. The language of Shakespeare, Milton, and the King James Bible, if you are willing to take the time to study it, is among the most magnificent gifts ever bestowed on humankind. The English language can convey a person's greatest fears, deepest secrets, profoundest anguish, and undying love and do so with a beauty and rarity normally reserved for painters. Whether poetry or prose...read.
"I was particularly lucky to have parents who did not push me in a specific direction, but simply wanted me to be happy and fulfilled, no matter what career I selected. I wish I could say the same of all my students; I see many of them pressured."