Go Ask Alice sits at a genuinely useful intersection of literature and media literacy instruction, since its contested authenticity and its historical role as drug education material both raise questions about how information, whether fictional or factual, shapes reader belief and behavior. A cross curricular unit pairing English and health or media literacy classes can use the novel as a shared anchor text, approaching it from complementary angles that reinforce each other. This kind of collaboration requires coordination but produces a richer learning experience than either subject could achieve teaching the material in isolation.

In the English classroom, the focus naturally stays on literary elements such as narrative voice, structure, and character development, while a media literacy or health class can examine the book's historical role in drug education campaigns and compare its claims and framing to current, evidence based information about substance use and addiction. This comparison gives students a concrete case study in how a piece of media, even one with genuine literary merit, can also function as a persuasive or educational tool with its own biases and limitations. Making this dual function explicit helps students read the book on multiple levels simultaneously.

A shared culminating project, perhaps a research based presentation or paper comparing the book's portrayal of addiction to current public health understanding, gives students a genuine opportunity to synthesize insights from both classes into a single piece of work. This kind of project requires careful coordination between teachers regarding timeline, expectations, and grading responsibilities, but the payoff is a more integrated learning experience that students often find more meaningful than two separate, disconnected units on the same book covered in different classes without any explicit connection between them.

Teaching Students to Evaluate Persuasive Framing

A central media literacy skill this unit can build is the ability to recognize persuasive framing even within a narrative that presents itself as a personal, factual account rather than an overt argument. Students can examine specific moments in the diary where the narrator's descriptions seem designed to evoke a particular emotional response, and discuss how this kind of framing functions differently than a direct, explicit argument would. This analysis helps students understand that persuasion often operates through storytelling and emotional appeal, not just through explicit claims and evidence, a distinction that matters enormously for evaluating contemporary media as well.

• Compare the novel's portrayal of addiction to current, evidence based public health information
• Identify specific moments where narrative framing shapes emotional response to events
• Discuss how the book's original marketing shaped reader expectations and trust
• Examine how drug education materials have changed since the book's original publication
• Evaluate the ethical responsibilities of authors and publishers presenting persuasive narratives

Connecting to Contemporary Media Consumption

Drawing an explicit parallel between the book's historical role in drug education and contemporary examples of narrative based persuasion, such as social media testimonials, influencer content, or viral personal stories, helps students see the continued relevance of these media literacy skills well beyond this one older novel. Students can discuss how the emotional power of a personal narrative, whether presented as fact or fiction, continues to shape public understanding and behavior today just as it did when Go Ask Alice was first published and widely used in schools. This connection makes an otherwise historical discussion feel immediately relevant to students' own media consumption habits.

A short activity asking students to find and analyze a contemporary example of narrative based persuasion related to a health or social issue, applying the same critical questions they used with the novel, reinforces this transfer of skills concretely. This activity works well as a bridge assignment between the literature unit and ongoing media literacy instruction throughout the rest of the year, showing students that the analytical tools they developed are not confined to this single novel but apply broadly across the media they encounter daily.

Assessment Across Two Disciplines

When designing assessment for a cross curricular unit, it helps for both teachers to agree in advance on which skills belong to which discipline, even if the final project asks students to integrate both into a single piece of work. English teachers might primarily assess literary analysis skills such as evidence use and argument construction, while health or media literacy teachers assess factual accuracy and source evaluation, with a shared rubric section addressing how well the student integrates both perspectives into a coherent whole. This division of labor keeps grading manageable for both teachers while still rewarding genuine synthesis across the disciplines.

Coordinating a shared rubric across two different classrooms and two different teachers requires clear communication and probably a joint planning session before the unit begins, but the resulting consistency benefits students significantly, since they receive aligned expectations and feedback from both teachers rather than potentially conflicting guidance. Departments that have successfully run this kind of cross curricular collaboration report that the upfront planning investment pays off in stronger, more integrated student work and in the collaborative relationships it builds between departments that might not otherwise coordinate closely on curriculum.

Sustaining the Collaboration Over Time

A cross curricular unit like this one works best when it is documented clearly enough that it can be repeated and refined in future years, rather than reinvented from scratch each time the two departments decide to collaborate again. Keeping shared planning documents, rubrics, and reflection notes from each iteration of the unit builds institutional memory that makes future collaboration smoother and allows both departments to make incremental improvements based on what worked and what did not in previous years. This kind of documentation also makes it easier to bring new teachers into the collaboration as staffing changes over time.

Schools that successfully sustain this kind of cross curricular work over multiple years often find that it strengthens collaboration well beyond this single unit, building relationships and shared planning habits between departments that carry over into other curricular collaborations. The specific choice of Go Ask Alice as an anchor text matters less over time than the collaborative structure itself, which can eventually be adapted to other texts or topics as the original unit evolves. Starting with a single well planned collaboration is often the easiest way to build this kind of sustained cross departmental partnership.