My ex-wife was a high school English teacher. The town she taught in wasn't exactly an inner-city ghetto, but at the same time that town's high school was best known for its football team, not for academic excellence. My ex- was a couple of tiers down in seniority within the English department, so she didn't get (shall we say) the star pupils. One evening she was moaning about how hard it was to get any of her students to read anything, or to write anything.
For reading, I suggested she skip the classics like Wuthering Heights and have her kids read science fiction, such as Edgar Rice Burroughs. His books are written in good English, they're easy to read, and not difficult to follow.
For writing -- on a few occasions she drove my car to work. My car at the time was an autocross-prepped AMC Javelin, i.e. a race car. Most of her male students were gearheads, and most of her female students hung out with the male gearheads. So I suggested that, rather than assign her students to write about something that they didn't care about, she assign the boys to write something automotive. I don't remember what we came up with for the girls, but something related. And the deal was that my ex- wouldn't grade the automotive essays, I would.
The experiment was a success. Kids who didn't know they could write found out that, by golly, they could write. They just needed to be interested in the subject.
