Luther King, Jr., students will explore America’s diversity and racial identity, as well as its tensions and injustices as they also relate to current events. Students will explore the various voices of American poetry throughout the country’s storied history, while studying Individualism & personal freedom through A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. And drawing upon The Great Gatsby and excerpts from The Things They Carried, students will be able to understand the ultimate cost of freedom & question what it means to “fight for America and the American Dream”—or against it, and debate which American values and behaviors are worth defending. Through exploring, comparing, and interrogating the assigned texts, this course is designed to reveal the depth of perspectives around understanding the American identity as it relates to race, established values, and the diversified American experience. To ensure sufficient practice with composition skills, students will write at least 2,000 words each quarter (i.e. about one page per week, through analytical, narrative, descriptive, and creative writing assignments, including poetry.) English 2 Honors Sophomores Beginning with a close study of Early American and 19th Century American literature, English 2 Honors students will read broadly from the American literary canon as they consider how American values and American identity are reflected in different literary contexts. They will grapple with the question of what it means to be an American, and they will go on to read works from diverse and underrepresented voices in order to understand the true complexity of that question and to recognize that the American story is not a single story, but really an ever-expanding collection of stories. Class discussions, collaborative projects, and writing assignments will challenge students to not only consider these multiple perspectives but also to think more critically about how each storyteller endeavors to tell their story as well as the reasons why they feel compelled to share it. In writing, students will work to craft more sophisticated, nuanced pieces. Assignments will focus on developing detailed critical commentary that reflects more complex abstract thinking. Students will also think more deeply about their purpose for writing as they continue to cultivate and hone their own authorial voice. Course work will conclude with an extended written analysis of multiple major works studied during the year. American writers for study in this course have included Crèvecœur, Rush, Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Dickinson, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Douglass, Chopin, Hurston, Fitzgerald, Hansberry, Miller, and O’Brien. Nonfictional and Fictional Narratives - The Hero’s Journey Semester One, Semester Two Reclassed Freshmen and Sophomores Nonfictional & Fictional Narratives are a first- and second-semester course that examines literary elements and techniques used by writers of nonfiction and fiction alike. The coursework encourages students to read closely and to consider the different ways that writers tell stories using both fact and fiction to create “truthful” narratives, and have done so for more than 2500 years. This year the course is organized around the theme of the Hero’s Journey. We will begin with two foundational texts: Homer’s Odyssey, and the Joseph story from Genesis. These texts give two archetypal journeys, that of Odysseus and of Joseph. We then move to Plato’s Symposium, to consider what a hero of knowing; and to the anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, to consider what a hero of learning. Finally, we examine the complicated heroic figures from Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1, Falstaff and Hal/Prince Henry. Through the reading and consideration of these stories - of these heroic journeys - students will engage in various writing exercises to demonstrate both by commentary and by imitation their understanding of the various strategies writers use to tell their stories. In the culminating project of the year, students tell their own heroic journeys—fictional, nonfictional, or somewhere in between.
4