DESIGNATION: Level I requirement

GOALS & MATERIAL COVERED: This yearlong required course for 10th graders affords students the opportunity to explore the American experience from two directions, combining the chronology of history with a critical approach to literature. The primary goal of the class is to build solid interpretive reading skills, and teach the process of analytical writing through intensive classroom discussion and regularly scheduled critical papers. During the winter, students study rhetorical devices in preparation for the Hays Prize Speaking Contest.

TEXTS: Readings have included: The Crucible, Leaves of Grass, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, Our Town, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Catcher in the Rye, and a selection of shorter works from Emerson, Thoreau, Dickinson, Gilman, Hawthorne, Kingsolver, Irving, Silko, Snyder, Alexie, Wright, and Updike.

 

DESIGNATION: Level I elective

GOALS & MATERIAL COVERED: According to the College Board, AP English: Language “engages students in becoming skilled readers of prose written in a variety of rhetorical contexts, and in becoming skilled writers who compose for a variety of purposes. Both their writing and their reading should make students aware of the interactions among a writer’s purposes, audience expectations, and subjects as well as the way generic conventions and the resources of language contribute to effectiveness in writing.” In this full-year course, students will learn “to read complex texts with understanding and to write prose of sufficient richness and complexity to communicate effectively with mature readers.” All students on campus in May take the AP exam.

TEXTS: Readings may include, but are not limited to: works by John Locke, Thomas Carlyle, Jonathan Swift, Seamus Heaney, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Virginia Woolf, H.L Mencken, Melba Patillo Beals, Margaret Atwood, Cornel West, E.O. Wilson, Leslie Marmon Silko, Edward Abbey, David Quammen, and Stephen Jay Gould.

PREREQUISITE: By departmental permission only.

 

DESIGNATION: Level I elective

GOALS & MATERIAL COVERED: According to the College Board, AP English: Literature should include literary pieces that "invite and reward rereading and do not... yield all (or nearly all) of their pleasures of thought and feeling the first time through" and that "such reading should be accompanied by thoughtful discussion and writing." Students enrolled in AP English should be prepared to "read deliberately… [in order to] understand a work's complexity, to absorb its richness of meaning, and to analyze how that meaning is embodied in literary form." In this full-year course, we engage in intensive, student-led, daily discussions moderated by the instructor. In addition to regularly scheduled short papers and longer critical analyses, students prepare for the exam by writing weekly in-class essays from released AP exams. All students on campus in May take the AP exam.

TEXTS: Readings may include, but are not limited to: novels, plays, and poems from authors such as Joseph Conrad, Robert Penn Warren, Toni Morrison, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Virginia Woolf, Leslie Marmon Silko, Walt Whitman, Maya Angelou, Richard Wright, and Samuel Beckett.

PREREQUISITE: By departmental permission only.

 

DESIGNATION:  Level I elective

GOALS & MATERIAL COVERED:  In this course, students learn how literature captures the unifying power of competition through an exploration of the connection between athletic competition and the written word. Credit the courage of an athlete for landmarks such as Title IX and desegregation. Social consciousness is often first awakened in relation to the athlete. Whether capturing the simplicity of an afternoon jog or deconstructing the value of Jesse Owens defying Hitler, sports writers share the glory of the moment, and contribute to the historical legacy such moments create. Reflecting on a wide array of athletic endeavors, students will strengthen their understanding and application of sport and writing. By writing their own tightly controlled pieces and honing their particular strengths in composition and scholarly dialogue, students will also continue to sharpen their understanding of advanced grammatical and rhetorical principles.

TEXTS:  Texts may include:  Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger; In These Girls, Hope is A Muscle, Madeleine Blais; Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, Christopher McDougall; Fever Pitch, Nick Hornsby.

DESIGNATION: Level I elective
No Prerequisites

 

 

TEXTS:  Common authors may include Richard Russo, Marilynne Robinson, Junot Diaz, Jennifer Egan, Jumpa Lahiri, Adam Johnson, Mohsin Hamid, or Donna Tartt.

 

GOALS & MATERIAL COVERED: In this consecutive-blocks course, we will explore themes involving the family, politics, war, alienation, gender, migration, and issues of cultural assimilation. The aim is to examine cultures and ensuing conflicts from the perspective of various ethnic/racial/national backgrounds and to investigate how people of differing environments make ethical decisions during times of desperation. Students will be examining nonfiction work/critical essays, primary- source historical images, film, political cartoons and music that help provide frameworks for considering how literature reflects conflict, provides possible opportunities to resolve conflicts, as well as reveals the varying ways in which members of various cultural groups have responded to conflict. By delving into such areas of strife, we will strengthen our ability to empathize with those who have not had their stories heard in the past and consider how that might impact our relationships today. Topics/Units to be explored include: Native American/Indigenous peoples; Revolutions in the Caribbean and Latin America; War and Conflict in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Europe.

 

Texts may include, but are not limited to Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia, A Tempest by Aime Cesaire, Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, Zuya by Albert Whitehat, Night by Elie Wiesel as well as select short stories by Junot Diaz, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. 

DESIGNATION: Level I elective (Winter)

GOALS & MATERIAL COVERED: In this course unit, students will be challenged to examine their own identity and the identity of others. Students will first think critically about the essential question of who they are and how they function within society and then be challenged to do the same for other identities that might not necessarily match their own. Chimamanda Adichie’s TED Talk, “The Danger of a Single Story” will introduce students to the essential questions of the unit.

What is identity? What is the “danger of a single story”? How is our identity and that of others constructed by the heteronormative? How do we locate ourselves within this heteronormative culture we live in? How can we act as agents for other identities that might not necessarily match our own? A variety of texts will help them explore answers to that question.

DESIGNATION: Level I elective (Fall & Spring)

GOALS & MATERIAL COVERED: This writing-intensive course aims to help students develop the full spectrum of writing skills used for feature articles, interviews, news articles, photojournalism pieces, and editorials. Students learn how to generate ideas, gather facts and information, write effective leads, and use the most incisive language to convey ideas in a concise and engaging manner.

TEXTS: Readings may include, but are not limited to: The Art and Craft of Feature Writing, William E. Blundell.

 

 

DESIGNATION: Level I elective (Winter)

GOALS & MATERIAL COVERED: This course provides an in-depth look at the history of the Bible and studies specific prose and poetic narratives. Students focus on the impact of the Bible on subsequent literature and art, including works by Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, Joyce, and Eliot. The course begins with selected books from the Old Testament, moves into the New Testament, and culminates in an overview of important works, both ancient and modern, that have been influenced by the Bible.

TEXT: The Oxford Study Bible

 

 

GOALS & MATERIAL COVERED: In this course, students will utilize a variety of genres and sources from the British canon to explore how our fascination with the macabre serves as a doorway into a better understanding of the human condition. From our analysis of “the other” to our focus on more recent dystopian narratives, students will engage in both formal and informal discussions and will compose critical analyses as a means to consider the universal human experience through the lens of the marginalized, displaced, and corrupt.

COURSE: ES: Personal Narratives
no prerequisites; grades 11, 12, PG

 

DESIGNATION: Level I elective 

 

GOALS AND MATERIAL COVERED:  Some of the best writing today is occurring in nonfiction. Working both from a class texts or and books chosen independently, students will explore topics of interest to them through reading and writing texts drawn from real life.  Authors may include Annie Dillard, Laura Hillenbrand, Eric Larson, Kathleen Norris, John McPhee, and/or Michael Paterniti.

 

TEXTS: Class texts and books chosen independently by students

 

DESIGNATION:  Level I elective

DESIGNATION: Level I elective (Fall & Spring)

GOALS & MATERIAL COVERED: This course provides students with the opportunity to study award-winning contemporary poetry, and to practice the writing of poetry through daily writing exercises, the development of a manuscript of five to ten polished poems, and the presentation of one major poetry project.

TEXTS: Readings may include, but are not limited to: The Language of Life, Bird by Bird: The Practice of Poetry, A Handbook of Poetry, and The Best American Poetry, as well as works by Lee, Gluck, Hoagland, Oliver, Kenyon, Stern, Leirs, Hickok, and Duhamel.

 

DESIGNATION: Level I Requirement

GOALS & MATERIAL COVERED: The goal of this writing intensive class is to introduce the students through exploration and practice the elements intrinsic to the art of writing short fictional works. From finding ideas for stories, developing point of view, plot structure, character creation and convincing dialog, the student will discover how all these elements play into the creation of a well constructed, fluid work of fiction. The brevity of the form all but ensures the completion of an end product – a well-developed and enticing short story.

TEXTS: Materials may include but are not limited to the following: Telling Stories: An Anthology for Writers; Creating the Story; The Writing Life; Writing Tools: Fifty Essential Strategies for Every Writer; Models for Writers; Echo Chambers:  Figuring Voice in Modern Narrative.

 

DESIGNATION: Level I elective 

GOALS & MATERIAL COVERED: New systems by Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, and other thinkers challenged artists to express consciousness in new ways beginning in the early 20^th century.  Their discoveries were profound; one critic claims it is difficult for us moderns to think of ourselves in pre-Darwinian or pre-Freudian terms. Examining early Modernist literature in Great Britain through formal discussion and critical analyses, students will assess the extent to which we still use these thinkers’ and artists’ ways of knowing to understand ourselves and our world.

 

TEXTS: may include, but are not limited to: William Shakespeare’s The Tempest; James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse; poetry by T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, H.D., and others; and E.M. Forster’s Howards End.

COURSE:  ES: The Romantic Spirit

DESIGNATION: Level I Core Course
no prerequisites; grades 11, 12 and PG

GOALS & MATERIAL COVERED: A love of childhood, the conviction that everything good, beautiful, and true is already within us, along with a love of nature, and abiding hope in possibility characterized the Romantic period.  This was an artistic movement in the nineteenth century. Looking at influential Romantic poets in England -- Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Byron among them -- this course will also feature a great English novel such as Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, or Jane Eyre, and an examination of how Romanticism shaped the Transcendentalists in America and subsequent artists here and in Europe.

TEXTS: Readings may include, but are not limited to writings by:  Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Byron, and novels such as Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, or Jane Eyre

 

DESIGNATION: Level I elective (Fall & Spring)

GOALS & MATERIAL COVERED: In this course, students will focus on both the role of women in literature and female writers throughout the British canon.  We will begin with Shakespeare’s most famous wife, continue with Jane Austen, then move through the 19^th and 20^th centuries, using both informal and formal discussions as well as critical analyses to understand how the perspective of such writers as the Bronte sisters, George Eliot, Rebecca West, and Virginia Woolf both reflected and influenced the changing roles of women in greater Western Society.  We will continue our journey in the second trimester of the course into the 21^st century, looking at how the British woman’s voice transcends the boundaries of the British Isles to comment on her place in today’s world.

 

TEXTS:  may include, but are not limited to: William Shakespeare’s Macbeth; Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice; George Eliot’s Silas Marner; Emily Bronte’sWuthering Heights; Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out; Rebecca West’s Return of the Soldier; Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. 

DESIGNATION: Level I requirement

GOALS & MATERIAL COVERED: This yearlong course required for 9th graders is designed to improve students' language and communication skills, and to expose them to various genres and themes in literature. Students study the short story, poetry, drama, and the novel as a way to understand the complexities of written expression, become familiar with literary terminology, and acquire new vocabulary. In addition, students hone their grammar and writing skills through homework, in-class exercises, and regularly scheduled critical analyses, creative pieces, and personal narratives.

TEXTS: Readings have included:
Oedipus Rex, Antigone, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest, A Raisin in the Sun, Things Fall Apart, and The Odyssey, as well as the fall play and selected poetry and fiction, including but not limited to, works by Shakespeare, Frost, Keats, Kenyon, Hughes, cummings, Oliver, Ginsberg, Whitman, Angelou, Bradstreet, Dillard, Cisneros, Orwell, Bradbury, Huxley, and Lee.