Like Charles, John used a variety of literary genres
, including fictional texts such as Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, John Knowles's A Separate Peace, and Shakespeare's Julius Caesar as major texts. In addition, he used MBT Shoes a text focused on writing essays. John indicated that he had "plenty of problems" getting his students to read and that there was probably a correlation between the seven or eight students earning Ds and Fs and their below-grade-level reading abilities.