English teachers have an important job. They teach students how to read and write well, how to understand what they read, how to learn from their peers, and how to have productive and challenging conversations. Being a successful English teacher can be difficult, but there are steps you can take to improve, so that both you and your students get more out of your time in the classroom.
Choose material that will interest your students. While classics like Moby Dick are incredibly important historically and have a lot of literary value, they can be too long, boring, and seemingly irrelevant to hold your students' interest for long. Instead, assign shorter or more contemporary works, or works that you know your students will enjoy.
Look for literary or academic merit in unlikely places: even a zombie apocalypse novel like Colson Whitehead's Zone One deals with challenging and important topics that perfectly complement a classic like Hemingway's In Our Time while still remaining relevant to modern audiences.