Reimagining the Classic American Dream Unit
How high school teachers across America are updating this foundational unit, 100 years after âGatsby.â
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Go to My Saved Content.In Jennifer Kirkâs 11th-grade English class, students spend a year examining the American experience and reading books like The Great Gatsby and Their Eyes Were Watching God.
But itâs when discussion of the American Dream gets closer to home that her West Virginia students light up.
âOne thing unifying my kids is that they are from Appalachia, which has been ravaged by greed and corporations,â said Kirk, a 2024 Teacher of the Year finalist. âI ask them how we can ensure that our culture can continue.â
While Kirkâs students enjoy Gatsby, they âsee themselvesâ in the writing of Wendell Berry and Breece DâJ Pancakeâwriters who capture rural life.
In Wisconsin, where the Hmong people are the stateâs largest Asian ethnic group due to a mid-1970s influx of refugees, Kabby Hong, an English teacher at Verona High School, draws a powerful connection between the American Dream and the immigrant experience. âI think of the United States as a nation built on immigrant nostalgia and mythology. Talking about their stories benefits students,â said Hong, who was Wisconsinâs first Asian American Teacher of the Year in 2022. Before moving to Wisconsin, he didnât know much about the Hmong people; now heâd like to have students read Hmong author Kao Kalia Yangâs memoir The Latehomecomer.
A literature unit on the American Dream has long been a high school rite of passage. Students might read Gatsby in Louisiana, where Fitzgeraldâs century-old milieu of Long Island trust fund brats may feel as distant as foreign shores, or Of Mice and Men in East Los Angeles, five hours south of where the novellaâs protagonists fantasized about a ranch of their own. While teachers often look to tradition, department protocols, or state standards for guidance on how to teach the unit, others, like Hong and Kirk, are galvanized by current events, geography, and the interests and needs of students, who inevitably consider their home, their values, and their potential for success and belonging in the world outside the classroom.
To learn how educators around the country are currently framingâand even reinventingâthis classic unit, I spoke with over a dozen teachers from Florida to California.
âAmerica is big, with a diverse range of visions,â said Elise Boutin, Louisianaâs 2025 Teacher of the Year. âSince [the American Dreamâs] original conception, weâve grown. Is there something we can all agree on? Do we have anything left to agree on as a country?â
The answer might be yes.
Is the American Dream on âLife Supportâ?
The concept of the American Dream dates back to 1931, when James Truslow Adams mythologized âthat dream⌠in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement.â Now itâs invoked by rappers and alike and appears to be an idea that many of us agree on. In a from the Sine Institute at American University, researchers found that across political parties, Republicans and Democrats each considered happiness and fulfillment, freedom to make life decisions, financial success, and close meaningful relationships the most important elements of the American Dream.
The dream isnât fixed, though. The dreamerâany student, ultimatelyâhas autonomy over its construction and expression; otherwise, it would not be American.
Yet in classrooms across America, âmost students feel the American Dream is unattainable,â said Andreas Kolaczko, who teaches at Lorain High School in Ohio. In South Florida, English teacher Fred S. told me that for many of his students, the American Dream is âon life support.â Health care difficulties, the Covid-19 pandemic, and school shootings have âhardenedâ them, said the teacher, who didnât feel comfortable using his full name.
For some students, the idea of belonging isnât a given. â[In America] weâre having a challenging debate about citizenship,â said Kabby Hong, and thereâs a long history of wrestling with the question of who belongs here and why. âNothing brings that to light more than Wong Kim Ark saying, âIâm part of this country,â and [in 1897].â
The data corroborates much of this youthful gloominess. A July found that while nearly 70 percent of respondents over age 65 believed the dream was still attainable, only 39 percent of young adult respondents felt it remains in reach. Black respondents were more than twice as likely to state that the American Dream had never been possible. Likewise, a January 2025 surveying 1,500 young people found that 74 percent of respondents believed their generation was less likely to achieve happiness than predecessors.
And yet, teachers report that many teens appear undaunted.
No matter how she frames the American Dream to her students, âat the end of the day, they have hope,â says Monique Ulivi, who teaches at Garfield High School, an East Los Angeles school where 99 percent of students are Latino. Ulivi recalled one of her âawesomeâ students writing that dreaming is âa ray of hopeâ in Of Mice and Men. The fact that middle class life doesnât exactly work for Lennie and George doesnât diminish its importance.
Hope, Ulivi said, is also what fueled Jay Gatsby, whether or not his goal was attainable.
Is âGatsbyâ Still Relevant?
Jay Gatsby gets wealthy skirting laws, but for students raised on rap music narratives of rags-to-riches triumph, an unfamiliar last name or shady income stream isnât a barrier to the dream. Professional athletes hang with Silicon Valley CEOs; streamers are as popular with teenagers as singers and actors.
Students donât know the Rockefellersâthey know Elon Musk and social media influencers in the vein of Mr. Beast. I know that my own students still valorize ambition, hard work, and resilience, yet TikTok and Instagram peddle a hustle culture that deemphasizes intellectualism and college in favor of entrepreneurial pursuits. The face of wealth is different now.
âThe new versus old money is hardâitâs generational wealth now,â said Ulivi. âItâs very apparent in Los Angeles. Students can walk to the Grove and understand the concept of privilege.â Fred S. notes that his students covet fast money born of fleeting online fame. âThey mention people getting rich for stupid stuff, like the âhawk tuahâ girl,â the teacher said. âSomeone goes viral, and then they have a podcast, a TikTok channel, and sponsors.â
For many kids, âthe American Dream is being a YouTuber,â said Kabby Hong. âWe should ask: Why would that fulfill them?â
A 2024 op-doc in The New York Times supports Hongâs notion that influencer culture has birthed a âfantastical kind of American Dream.â The cites a : nearly one-third of preteens aspire to become influencers.
In 2025, itâs not hard to imagine Gatsby as a cryptocurrency tycoon âbuyingâ followers, Daisy Buchanan concealing sadness with giddy Instagram reels, and Tom Buchanan broadcasting his racism to internet audiences. With this update, assuming that students manage to process the challenging text, Gatsby feels like a contemporary creatureârelevant, indeed. In my teaching experience, Iâve observed that students know that anyone can now be anything or anyone online; they start practicing as soon as they get a smartphone.
First Generations
Immigrant students often pursue the American Dream for the sake of their parentsâas well as for themselves. They may also learn to hustle and advocate bravely well before adulthood.
In a 2021 New Yorker , âWaking Up from the American Dream,â the Ecuadorian American writer Karla Cornejo Villavicencio recalls how, as a teen growing up in Queens, New York, sheâd perform a character to protect her undocumented parents.
âIâd stroll in with an oversized Forever 21 blazer, red lipstick, a slicked-back bun,â she writes. âSometimes I leaned back in my chair, like a sexy gangster, and said, âSo, you tell me how you want my mom to survive in this country without a bank account.ââ
Unlike her privileged classmates, who found him âpathetic,â Villavicencio âadoredâ Jay Gatsby. âHe created his own persona, made a fortune in an informal economy, and lived a quiet, paranoid, reclusive life,â she writes. âMost of all, he longed.â
Villavicencioâs essay underscores a key piece of the dream for immigrant kids conditioned to âlongâ for scholarships and careers. Knowing that opportunities have come at the expense of hard-laboring parentsâ health and comfort can impose intense pressure on teens, and for some, like Villavicencio, a potential sense of shame and even resentment for all that parents have sacrificed and should be repaid, in care and in financial support.
As part of her American Dream unit, Venice High School English teacher Samantha Clineâs students read Upton Sinclairâs 1906 novel The Jungle, which depicts brutal working conditions for Lithuanian immigrants in Chicago. According to Cline, the class can become mildly contentious, with some students perceiving the novel as anti-capitalist or irrelevant due to improved regulatory practices. Clineâs immigrant students, in contrast, quietly volunteer that they know how easily people can be exploited, even if regulatory practices have improved.
Like Villavicencio, many have been sticking up for their parents since they could talk.
Windows and Mirrors
Despite social mediaâs ability to make even distant parts of the world feel closer, most American kids donât know much about the lives of others, so an American Dream unit is a chance to remedy that problem without dismissing the value of studentsâ experiences. According to Jeannine LeJeune-Gotte, a teacher at Rayne High School, âWhen [students] dig in and think about their background, their experiences or lack thereof are obviously powering their thoughts.â They assess the opportunities of others based on their own âbubbles.â
The job of teachers, then, is to offer lessons and texts that build on what students already knowâmirrorsâand then nudge them toward the unfamiliarâwindows. Thus, a kid in West Virginia might read Javier Zamoraâs memoir of immigration, Solito, and a Californian could learn about Appalachia through Pancakeâs short story âTrilobites.â
Discussion of the American Dream shouldnât be confined to literature. With her classâs emphasis on West Virginia, Jennifer Kirk, for example, essentially seeks to enact it, applying her studentsâ capacity for what she calls âguts, grit, and empathyâ to authentic classroom work on behalf of their own surroundings.
âI went to high school here in [Fayette County], and I was told to get out if I wanted to make it. But I refuse to let students leave being ashamed,â said Kirk. âI was in Paris last weekend, but thereâs no place like home.â
One year, her students wrote a bill proposing a public transit project that might improve local economic opportunities without harming the environment. Another project involved creating intervention plans to get teens to read more. Students conducted research, interviewed community members, and presented their findings to a panel of judges, which included one of the countyâs associate superintendents.
With such work, even a student cynical about the countryâs direction can taste empowerment, seeing how targeted local efforts might actually make that dream a likelier reality for many more Americans.
Teaching the Dream Today
Whether teachers reach for the canon, contemporary works, or projects to meet local needs, an American Dream unit invites controversyâtexts and lessons that feel indispensable in one district might be incendiary in another.
âOne class stood up and clapped after [reading ] âThe Hill We Climb,â said Kimberly Brown. ââWe will build, reconcile, and recoverâ was a powerful message for [Black and Latino] students who thought their system didnât care about them.â
Yet, in 2023, a single parent complaint in Florida led an elementary school to the same poem.
Reporting this story, I was struck by how many teachers didnât want to participate for fear of attracting attention.
The question is almost always there: What does a teacher include and leave out of classroom discussion? It would be disingenuous to teach Of Mice and Men without acknowledging the message behind the single Black character being forced to fight on the only night of the year heâs allowed in the bunkhouse with the White workers.
Celebrating the American Dream does not mean proclaiming its universal, unwavering fitness. How can teachers empower students without pretending that economic inequality is improving? Teachers donât simply prepare students for the real worldâa mantra that pops up on many high schoolsâ mission statements. Students can and should believe that they shape the fate of the world they inherit.
âThe dream is the hope,â mused Ulivi, recalling her studentâs essay. âIf you donât have it, you wonât do anything.â
Iâve made the same point to students. Even if a teacher emphasizes barriers to the dream, preaching resignation fails them. The work hinges on bravery and confidence.
âThese kids all have at least one story [of unlikely success] that they cling to,â said Ulivi. âItâs so cool and refreshing. You can argue about privilege and meritocracy, but students have to think that theyâre the change-makers. And we teachers have to believe that too.â