English Courses

Subfreshman English (World Literature)
(Subfreshmen) (1 unit)

Subfreshman English emphasizes the languages needed for academic success.

Subfreshman English deals with the language of writing. The focus moves from paragraph development to expository essays, including the basics of academic research. Students learn to fully support specific, focused thesis. Creative and personal essays also play a role in the language of writing.

Subfreshman English deals with the language of literature through the study of genre. Students learn the basics of literary analysis with short stories, novels, memoirs, drama (including Shakespeare), poetry, and film from international sources. A unit on classic mythology will provide the students with a frame of reference for much of Western Literature. Thematically the literature will focus on coming-of -age stories from around the world.

Subfreshman English deals with the mechanics of language through the study of grammar. With a goal of improving their own writing, students learn grammar descriptively through analysis of sentences and their own writing. Particular emphasis falls on parts of speech, clauses, basic sentence types and various phrases.

Freshmen English (American Literature)
(9^th grade) (1 unit)

Freshman English focuses primarily on American literature. Students learn how to appreciate the historical context of specific literary works; describe the technical qualities of important American short stories, novels, plays, biographies, essays, and poems; explain how theme, character, and setting contribute to meaning; describe the characteristics of a specific writer's style; respond to literature from personal, creative, and critical points of view; and analyze literary passages.

Student writing is essential to the course. Students compose summaries, critiques, essays, research papers, journal entries, short narratives, and poems. Grades reflect how well students prepare unified and coherent essays; paraphrase, summarize, and make generalizations; use evidence to support assertions; locate, evaluate, organize, and synthesize information from various sources; use correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization; edit and revise for word choice, organization, consistent point of view, and coherence; and create original poems, monologues, reports, plays, and stories.

Freshman English also reinforces listening and speaking skills. Students learn how to critique an oral presentation; convey complex ideas during class discussion; design and produce oral reports and multi-media compositions; ask relevant questions; deliver a formal speech; and debate.

Sophomore English (British Literature)
(10^th grade) (1 unit)

The sophomore year in English reinforces the critical reading, essay drafting, and creative writing skills developed in earlier years and introduces students to more advanced tools of essay organization. Students have ample opportunity to develop their skills of public speaking and oral interpretation of texts. The English II curriculum emphasizes writing as a process, including multiple levels of drafting, peer review, and revision. Major multi-draft papers students write during the sophomore year include a poem explication and a compare and contrast essay. Grammar instruction occurs in the context of writing.

The primary focus of the sophomore literature curriculum is British Literature. Students study works of literature from ancient to modern, engaging with multiple genres including the short story, the non-fiction essay, the novel, poetry, film, and drama. Major works include Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex, Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Jane Austen’s Emma, Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Students in English II explore works of literature in their larger historical and cultural contexts and are encouraged to make connections between texts. At the same time, students get daily practice examining texts in detail and learning the invaluable skills required for close reading.

Junior and Senior Special-Topics Courses (semester-long)
(1/2 unit per semester, 2 semester each year)

Shakespeare (Fall)

The Shakespeare course builds on the foundation established in the Subfreshman, Freshman and Sophomore years. The course focuses on selected tragedies, comedies, histories, tragi-comedies and sonnets. The students will connect the plays to Shakespeare’s historical context as well as examine a variety of critical approaches, both historical and contemporary. The wide range of Shakespeare on film also allows training in reading and interpreting film as text. Expectations for students include a research project, various essays, active discussion and class presentations.

African-American Literature (Fall)

This course provides an historical overview of African-American literature, from Frederick Douglass’ slave narrative to contemporary hip-hop music. We examine the importance of literacy, story craft, and social responsibility in the African-American literary tradition. We pay attention to the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, and contemporary social movements for racial justice and their relationship to African-American literature. Course materials include poetry, drama, non-fiction, novels, film and music. As a fall semester course, African-American Literature features a non-literary research paper.

Fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and film by the following authors may be covered: Frederick Douglass, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Amiri Baraka, Nicki Giovanni, Lorraine Hanson, Spike Lee, and Toni Morrison.

The Nineteenth-Century Novel (Fall)

This course begins by briefly examining the history of the novel and its development from a new, artistically uncertain and at times morally suspect form to an established, conventional genre. As we narrow our focus to the Nineteenth Century, we explore the concepts of naturalism, sentimentalism, romanticism, didacticism and gothic horror as they emerge in British novels spanning the century. We pay special attention to the social problem novel and its connections with historical trends arising from industrialization and the growth of urban centers in Great Britain, and we consider how novels represent changes in the conventions of class and gender as the century proceeds. Given the length of most nineteenth-century novels, we may read excerpts of a number of novels to give students a sense of some of the major writers and trends in the nineteenth-century British novel, then devote greater attention to a handful of novels that we read in their entirety. If time permits, we will touch on trends in the American novel, and note connections or departures between the two national literatures. As a fall course, this class will include an extra-literary research paper, a major essay on a historical issue or problem related to one or more of the novels we study.

Novels by the following authors may be covered: Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Oscar Wilde.

Utopia and Dystopia in Literature (Spring)

Philosophers, writers, and social critics have long been interested in the possibility of utopia, and have criticized their contemporary social order through futuristic stories of dystopias. This course will focus on the idea of utopia and dystopia in literature by reading and evaluating utopic and dystopic literature. Students will also complete a non-literary research project on utopian communities. Possible texts may include: Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gillman, Swastika Night by Katharine Burdekin, 1984 by George Orwell, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, and Snowcrash by Neil Stephenson.

The Hero's Journey (Spring)

Common to cultures around the world is the theme of the hero's journey. Often physical, sometimes metaphysical, the journey becomes for the hero a quest for self-knowledge and growth. In this class we will study a variety of heroes on a variety of journeys in a variety of genres from a variety of times and places. Some will be serious, some not so serious. Through examining the hero's journey we will, we hope, learn more of ourselves.

The Coming-of-Age Novel (Spring)

This course will explore variations of the bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novel. Starting with James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as an archetypal example of this genre in English literature, we will explore the struggles of young protagonists to find a place for themselves within their larger culture and society. The prospective reading list may include J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Ernest J. Gaines’s A Lesson before Dying, Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, and Jonathan Lethem’s Girl in Landscape.

Creative Writing
(10^th - 12^th grade) (1/2 - 1 unit)

Creative Writing is an elective course, which focuses on the analysis and composition of various literary genres. By offering some class time to engage in directed writing or free writing each day, this course encourages students to develop a daily writing practice. Creative writing also provides opportunities to read works by contemporary and classic authors and to discuss these texts as writing. Throughout the semester, students have the chance to experiment with narrative, poetic, dramatic, and mixed-genre forms in their writing. A workshop approach with regular sessions of peer and instructor review gives students the benefit of multiple perspectives on their writing and allows students to develop their critical capacities by reading other students’ writing. The first semester focuses on prose and poetry. The second semester emphasizes drama and other performance-oriented writing.

Students may enroll in either semester or for the full year. (Enrollment limit: 16 students)

Journalism
(9^th - 12^th grade) (1 unit)

Students in this class will learn journalism by being journalists. The course is organized around the Online Gargoyle, with all students becoming staff reporters for the OG. Through their own hands-on work, students will develop sound news judgment and the ability to determine what makes a good story. They will become skillful interviewers and researchers. They will learn how to write clearly and compellingly for a worldwide audience. They will also learn how to apply the tools of multimedia storytelling (audio slideshows, video, podcasts, blogs, interactive graphics) to their own projects. They will team up with student editors to refine their work for publication. Through practical experience, students will learn the ethics of fairness, accuracy, and responsibility, the essential components of good journalism. Throughout the course, students will be given as much freedom as possible to pursue their own story ideas. By the end of the year, students will have built an extensive online portfolio that they can show to prospective colleges or employers (when seeking summer jobs and internships).

Advanced Journalism: Editorship
(10^th - 12^th grade) (1 unit)
Prerequisite: Journalism

Students are admitted into this course only with special permission of the instructor. It meets concurrently with the Journalism class. Advanced Journalism may be taken multiple years.

This is for students who will be editors of the Online Gargoyle. Each editor is responsible for leading a team of student reporters. Editors work with reporters through all phases of a story: planning, researching, writing, and revising. Editors also determine the overall direction and editorial stance of the OG.

Social Advocacy I:
History, Theory, and Practice
(Social Advocacy I is co-sponsored with Social Studies)
(12^th grade, 11^th grade with Instructor Consent) (1/2 unit)

Social Advocacy I is a semester elective open to seniors and juniors with the permission of the instructor. Students enrolled in Social Advocacy do weekly volunteer work in community social service agencies. Students must be interested in and committed to the volunteer component. Various readings, lectures, guest speakers, and special assignments add to the students' experiences. Group discussion and journal writing play a key role.

(Enrollment limit: 16 students)

Social Advocacy II
(Social Advocacy II is co-sponsored with Social Studies)
(12^th grade, 11^th grade with Instructor Consent) (1/2 unit)
Prerequisite: Social Advocacy I or consent of department

In Social Advocacy II, students design and complete an in-depth community project. (Enrollment limit: 16 students)