The ability to think, read, and write clearly and effectively lies at the heart of every English course and extends throughout the curriculum.

At all grade levels work includes informal class discussions, close reading of the texts, and frequent written assignments: reading quizzes, analytical essays, and creative fiction and verse. Class enrollment is limited so that all English courses can provide ample opportunity for individual conferences and group workshops with instructors. The literature studied throughout the four-year program is selected to reflect as wide a variety of genres, styles, and periods as possible. Works chosen are designed to develop students' moral awareness and intellectual curiosity.

Aside from specific courses offered by the department, there are numerous additional opportunities for students to develop their interest or proficiency in the discipline. Special workshops in grammar or reading are offered upon request or as need arises. Advanced Placement tutorials are available to students who want an opportunity to review their reading and to practice taking sample examinations. Students at all grade levels have the opportunity to submit material to the newspaper and the Arts Magazine. Students are also encouraged to enter both national and local writing competitions. There are field trips to appropriate films and theater, and, when available, guest speakers are invited to address interested students.

Students must earn a total of four units in the English Department to satisfy the graduation requirement. English I (ninth grade) and English II (tenth grade) are year-long courses worth one unit each. In the eleventh and twelfth grades, students choose from a variety of semester courses worth one half unit each. An English course must be taken in each semester in which a student is enrolled.

English I

English II

The tenth-grade program builds upon composition and discussion skills introduced in the ninth grade and provides sustained practice in formal essay writing and occasional creative work. The course broadens the students’ familiarity with major literary genres, traditions, and writers. The year begins with discussion of works read over the summer. Course readings include Richard III, Oedipus Rex, Heart of Darkness, The Unvanquished, Fathers and Sons, and a selection of modern essays. In addition, students work with poetry and short-story anthologies. Vocabulary building and grammar review continue, both in conjunction with class work and through workbook exercises.

These semester courses focus on major writers, central literary themes, genres or periods, or on the art of composition itself. Grammar review and vocabulary workbooks are used in all seminars to prepare students for College Board Examinations. Seminar offerings vary from semester to semester, with new courses being added regularly.

Spring 2013 Seminars

Literary Loves

Corinthians 13 tells us that love is patient and kind, that it is not boastful, nor proud, that it does not “delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.” Literary lovers, however, usually fail to love in this ideal way. These flawed and fascinating characters love incompletely, delusionally, dishonestly, even hatefully. Their worlds are equally flawed and fascinating. They love in broken, chaotic places, where they confront barriers to love, sometimes defiantly. Our readings capture the intensity of such loves and invite analyses of all that interferes with—and spurs—desire. Readings are likely to include four novels (E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, Ivan Turgenev’s First Love, and Amitav Ghosh’s TheHungry Tide) and Tennessee Williams’s play A Streetcar Named Desire.

Shock of the New

According to Virginia Woolf, “On or about December 1910, human nature changed.” From the marvels of motorcars, skyscrapers, and aeroplanes, to the horrors of mechanized combat in the trenches of World War I, technological modernity radically transformed the nature of human experience in the early twentieth century. Literary modernists like Woolf sought to embody this profoundly altered sense of life in revolutionary forms and styles, drawing inspiration from the deliberately shocking experiments of modern painters. This course offers an interdisciplinary foray into modern literature and the visual arts, introducing the signature gestures of literary modernism—innovative techniques like imagism, collage, multiple perspectives, and stream of consciousness—alongside the movements in modern art that helped inspire them. Works studied respond in various ways to the First World War: Stein’s Picasso, Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, and Stoppard’s Travesties. In addition to studying a selection of modern poems and modernist “manifestos,” we will view and analyze works by such artists as Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, René Magritte, and Georgia O’Keeffe.

Shakespeare’s Laughter

In his own day, Shakespeare was at least as renowned for his comedies as for his tragedies and histories.In “Shakespeare’s Laughter,” we will read a broad selection of his comedies, considering them not only as works of Shakespeare’s own time—the Renaissance—but also as superb and rich repositories of the profoundest experiences, explored through laughter.Unlike the tragedies, which might be rivaled by some Greek tragedies, there is nothing like Shakespeare’s comedies, either before or since.Shakespeare laughs us into truth, beauty and ourselves. The play is about to begin!No empty seats!Get your season tickets now!

Narrations Strange

Madness sometimes makes sense.At least that’s what the narrators of our books will attempt to convince us.This class will study some seminal and charming sociopaths, psychopaths, and others on the edge.In addition to focusing on these unreliable narrators—and their curious ways of perceiving the world around them—we will also study the ways their celebrated stories are constructed.Our ferociously compelling books include Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mister Ripley, and shorter pieces by Dave Eggers, Julie Orringer, Tim O’Brien, and others.In addition to the books, we will also analyze the structurally and thematically bizarre film Memento (2000). .

Chicano/a Literature

In 1967, Corky Gonzales’s created “Yo Soy Joaquín/I Am Joaquín,” a text that many consider to be one of the origins of the Chicano Movement.It was a galvanizing spoken word poem that expressed pride in bilingualism, an Aztec heritage, and the Mexican Revolution. We will begin our study with this declaration of self-identity, and trace its influences on more contemporary works. Possible texts may include: María Amparo Ruiz de Burton’s Who Would Have Thought It?; Norma Cantú’s Canícula; Tomás Rivera’s ... and the earth did not devour him; Pat Mora’s Chants; Ana Castillo’s So Far From God; Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera; Luiz Valdez’ “Honest Sancho’s Used Mexican Lot” and other teatro campesino plays.

Telling Stories: The Craft of Fiction Writing

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” This famous first line from Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude immediately pulls the reader in, simultaneously creating suspense and establishing character.How do you come up with great first lines?How do you keep the reader reading?How do you make your characters come alive on the page?We’ll explore all these questions (and more!) in this course on creative writing.In specific, we’ll study the fundamental elements of fiction—characterization, plot, setting, dialogue, pacing—and do exercises designed to develop your skills in these areas.We’ll also read stories and novel excerpts from famous writers, analyzing their fiction for technique, learning how writers create the effects they do.Finally—and most importantly—every student will craft her or his own fiction.This course above all is dedicated to creativity and to learning about literature from a whole new perspective: that of the writer.

Creative Writing: Poetry

This is a writing workshop culminating in your producing a portfolio of your own poetry. While no prior poetry writing experience is necessary, this seminar is not for the faint of heart.Be forewarned: your journal will become an extra appendage! You will be expected to write nightly and “publish” a poem each week. During class time we will do limbering up writing exercises, talk about craft and aesthetics, and discuss and critique one another’s poems. Your enthusiastic and supportive participation in workshopping the pieces of your peers is a must and will constitute part of your final grade. We will read poetry as writers of poetry and not as critics, using the work of professional writers to instruct us. Weekly writing assignments are designed to give you opportunities to experiment with different poetic styles, devices, voices. You will be free to be creative and playful, but you must also meet deadlines, as professional writers do.In addition to writing poems each week, you will choose a poet’s work to appreciate, analyze, emulate, and present to the class. We will also, as per tradition, hold a reading for the school in late May.Texts will include a course reader and an anthology of contemporary poetry such as The Best American Poetry: 2012.

Personal Essay Workshop

The personal essay is about the world as illuminated by writer’s own experience and attitudes. This workshop is about distinguishing your ideas from conventional ones, and refining their expression to make them clear and engaging to others. The process is challenging, but it's how real writers go about it. For your pains you will emerge with a clearer, more personal, and more confident voice whenever you sit down to write. Open to sophomores, juniors & seniors. Two one-hour meetings per week, Monday and Thursday, eighth period. 1/4 credit. Min/max enrollment: 6/10. Stan Washburn has published several books. Besides writing, he has taught Drama Tech and Drama at College Prep, and writes the weekly Changes posts on Campus News.