Banging out the curriculum

My friend and I teach all the same classes, heading up the Junior IB English team and the Freshman English team. She's been in Europe all summer, only returning to the Baltimore area tonight. We have been ordered by our department head to have a lunch date tomorrow, and, there, we will bang out our final curriculums for the year. We have some flexibility with our curriculum, and one of our focuses for the 9th grade is getting our texts more international.

This is my preference for those 9th graders:

September: Fences
September/October: Romeo and Juliet
October/November: To Kill a Mockingbird
November/December: excerpts from The Odyssey, Life of Pi
January: In the Time of Butterflies
February: Twelfth Night (excerpts... it's the school play)
February/March: A Lesson Before Dying
April: Persepolis
May: maybe spot for one more... or finish anything we haven't finished yet. Good time for a poetry unit, too, though we'll be integrating that all year.

We'll see. The more interesting battle will be over the Juniors, probably. I'm still finding Unbearable Lightness of Being to be fairly unbearable, but think I could teach it nonetheless - Kundera does some interesting things throughout that may be fun to analyze. I don't know. We'll negotiate. That's what it is.

We're both passionate and hyperbolic lovers of literature, so sparks may fly. But we're also good friends, so all is well.