Ms. Miller Revamps English Department Curriculum

As of the second trimester of the 2025-2026 school year, English teacher Madi Miller is the only English 10 instructor who has adapted curriculum to align with the updated Minnesota K-12 Language Arts standards, which went into effect July 3, 2023. These standards state that students should be able to “Analyze influences on content, meaning, and style of text, including fact and fiction, time period, and author perspective and identity, including Dakota and Anishinaabe perspective, in complex literary and informational texts,” (Minnesota Department of Education). 

To make this change, Miller removed William Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies’ from her classroom’s curriculum, and in its place opted to teach the New York Times Bestseller, Angeline Boulley’s ‘The Firekeeper’s Daughter’. Boulley, an Indigenous woman herself, chose to focus her debut novel on themes of identity, community, and the dangers of punitive justice, all set against the backdrop of an Indigenous reservation in Staule Ste. Marie, Michigan.

“I wanted [to teach] something, unlike the Lord of the Files, that made the students feel more connected to the book they’re reading,” Miller said. “I wanted to give them an insight into their lives.”

While Miller may be the first to integrate this curriculum change, it has continued to be a point of discussion within the English department. Some teachers in the department would prefer to keep ‘Lord of the Flies’ in the curriculum, while others would rather find a replacement. The compromise has been to teach ‘The Firekeeper’s Daughter’ on an experimental basis due to its pertinence to Indigenous culture and history, along with its alignment with the updated K-12 Language Arts standards. Despite Miller being the first to teach the book, she was not the first to recommend it.

“I can’t take all the credit for it. It was [English teacher Sydney] Driver who recommended the book to me, and everyone else loved it,” Miller said. “They decided I would be the test subject since I profoundly dislike the book [Lord of the Flies].”

This year, if ‘The Firekeeper’s Daughter’ doesn’t work well, the English Department will go back on the drawing board and seek out new books to teach that uphold the updated standards. 

Minnesota English Language Arts Standards – Eric, 26 June 2020, files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED631664.pdf.