English

In this sophomore-year course, students focus on reading, thinking, and writing about fiction,
poetry, and drama. To help understand the purpose and significance of literature they read,
students discover and explore interdisciplinary contexts, form opinions, make connections, and
ask and answer their own questions. Readings include a selection of short stories, Laurie Halse
Anderson’s Speak, George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, and
poetry from the 16th Century to today. Throughout the course, students develop and improve
their skills of communication by practicing active reading strategies, employing discussion
techniques, writing regular personal reflections and formal compositions that are both creative
and analytical, presenting on their findings, and producing multimedia projects.

In this junior-year course, students study 20th-century and current American literature.
Throughout the year, students will analyze, discuss, and respond to diverse works of American
poetry, essays, narratives, drama, nonfiction, and fiction. Readings include F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
The Great Gatsby and Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, poetry from the Harlem
Renaissance, as well as more contemporary short stories. As they navigate varied American
perspectives, students will hone their analytical, persuasive, and creative writing skills. This
course strives to challenge students’ understanding of American society as a whole, as well as
their concepts of identity, belonging, and community.

Literature presents an opportunity to study our sense of ourselves and where we are headed.   When we conceive of the future, what visions do we have, and do we seek to enact those visions or avoid them? The future is not like the weather—we don’t just wait for it to happen, yet it also sits outside our full control.  What do our stories of today and the past suggest about how we create "the future"? Our current moment feels especially consequential, a moment that seems to be radically reshaping our sense of the future. Along with a study of contemporary visions, students will study the history of the future, reflecting on what past eras have imagined when they pictured our present.  What concerns did they have about us, and which became a part of our reality? Although this course is structured as a study of literature, we will also examine how storytelling itself has changed and continues to change. Through research, discussion, and creative work, students will grapple with one of the most compelling questions of all: what does the future have in store for us?

In this writing-intensive course, students focus on the genre of the essay. Throughout the
course, students read exemplary texts and focus on analyzing the techniques that writers use to
engage and persuade the audience, and they work to employ these techniques in their own
writing. Techniques that receive significant attention include structure, language, rhetoric, using
outside sources, and wit. As they read, students practice and refine their active reading
strategies and focus on analyzing how and why writers design their essays and employ particular
techniques. As they compose, students make consistent use of the writing process, continually
practicing and refining their pre-writing, drafting, revising, and editing skills. Additionally,
students frequently practice their peer review and feedback skills, which are integrated into the
writing process. Students create and collect a portfolio that includes both expository and
persuasive essays that make intentional use of techniques relating to structure, language, and
rhetoric.

What makes a play so compelling to watch and understand? Why is drama a great way to get a point across? This course will start with the origins of storytelling on the stage as we know it today, looking at the practices of Greek theatre and Shakespeare, before moving into the creation of a message in plays such as Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” and Miller’s “Death of a Salesman”. Finally, we will look at modern drama that comments on the society from whence it came, such as Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” and Kaufman’s “The Laramie Project”. Plays are not just words on a page or actors on a stage, and assignments will go beyond just reading and writing about them, examining how diction, staging, and direction of a production of a play can make or break a playwright’s message.

What are the many ways we tell our stories and convey our ideas? How is the way we see a
learned skill and something that can be developed? In this course, students will study a variety
of stories in a variety of media. Along with exploring some traditional ways of storytelling—short
stories, plays, and poems—students will study visual and multimedia forms as “texts,” reading
and interpreting with the same language employed when considering literature. The class will
consider the relationship between the written word and the visual world, in how we see and
understand, and in the power of narrative and its shape. Students will discover how stories
surround us, hiding in plain sight, and how to better interpret those stories. This class is also for anyone curious about how two- and three-dimensional art, multimedia forms, video, and film have a place at the table in an English classroom.

This college-level course is intended to prepare students for the AP exam in English Language and Composition. Throughout the course, students will practice writing using a variety of rhetorical patterns, and they will approach writing as a process that places significant emphasis on pre-writing, drafting, revising, and editing. Students will read and carefully analyze a broad and challenging range of texts to develop their understanding of literary and rhetorical elements and techniques. In May, they will take the AP exam.

In the first three modules of this college-level course, students will undertake a comparative study of the short story with a focus on the essential elements of fiction, begin a year long meditation on lyric poetry, and give serious consideration to an Aristotelian understanding of the tragic form in Sophocles’ Oedipus Cycle. In the subsequent module, students will turn their attention to the centrality of Shakespeare to our imagination in Macbeth, Othello, and King Lear. Our final module examines the genre of the novel with a particular focus on Toni Morrison’s Beloved. In May, students will take the AP exam in Literature and Composition. Particular attention is given to daily quizzes and tests that prepare students specifically for the national exam. Throughout the year, students will continue to hone their mastery of the writing process and develop their ability to write effective essays.

The AP Capstone Seminar course presents students with opportunities to engage in an in-depth
study of real-world or academic issues or problems, analyzing them from multiple perspectives.
The overarching theme of the course focuses on exploring the complexities of one’s multiple and
evolving identities, an individual’s roles in, relationships with, and responsibilities toward their
local and global communities in an effort to broaden one’s understanding of citizenship.
Ultimately, the goal of the course is to help students answer the essential question: What Makes
a Citizen? Exposure to multiple perspectives and content from different disciplines allows
students to appreciate, better comprehend, and engage in conversations on civic identity
formation and development, and discuss, analyze, and evaluate ideas associated with engaged
citizenship in local and global contexts. Throughout the year, students practice critical reading,
writing, and research skills in an effort to craft, communicate, and defend evidence-based
arguments in collaboration with others or in their independent work. Developed skills are
applied as students research topics of their choosing for the multipart AP exam.