Doing Time by Rob Thomas

Doing Time by Rob Thomas is an unusual piece of adolescent literature that may be too controversial to study in a classroom. It is unusual in the way that each paragraph is its own story-line about a different student’s experiences during community service hours. At first it is hard to pick up that the perspective has changed, but a few chapters in I realized that the first paragraph was a set up for the …

…I am only playing the devil’s advocate and thinking what parents may view as acceptable or unacceptable. I do, however, think it could be a good book to teach. I enjoyed reading it and I think high-schoolers would as well. Doing Time would be good to teach because it can open the door to great discussions, writing topics, and critical thinking based on the characters, the characters situations, and how those situations are managed.