2024-2025 Course Flipbook v2 - Flipbook - Page 27
ENGLISH 8: NAVIGATING INDEPENDENCE
“Lord, what fools these mortals be” (A Midsummer Night’s Dream). Building on English
7, students in English 8 consider many big questions: How do we make decisions as
individuals? How is our decision-making impacted when we are responsible for others?
What power do we have when someone else is making a decision for us? How can we
avoid becoming, as Puck famously observes, “fools”? To respond to these, students
recognize the personal challenges literature presents to readers, adding deeper critical
reading, thinking, and writing skills to compare and contrast narratives. As students
progress through a study of major works, they build reading stamina, abstract thinking,
and higher order analysis, grappling with multiple perspectives in each text, investigating
moral ambiguity, and recognizing the importance of agency. By deeply considering
characters who 昀椀nd themselves lost, alone, and independent, tracking their responses to
social pressures, personal motivations, and other struggles, students realize that people
are rarely all good or all bad. Instead, everyone navigates their independence as best
they can. Texts may include S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies,
William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and more.
ENGLISH 9: ODYSSEY AND JOURNEY
ENGLISH
In the 昀椀rst stanza of The Odyssey, as translated by Emily Wilson, Homer exhorts his Muse to
“[t]ell the old story for our modern times. Find the beginning.” Students 昀椀nd the beginning
of their upper school story in English 9 through a selection of ancient and modern texts,
all focused on the journeys that literature facilitates for both readers and protagonists.
English 9 examines many literary
journeys, beginning with The Odyssey
as the archetypal physical journey,
progressing into coming-of-age
stories and mental journeys of
tragic heroes. While all stories
are journeys, our students read
deeply to re昀氀ect on the positive
change journeys bring as well as
the risks associated with leaving
behind all one knows. Students
develop these re昀氀ections
through analytical writing and
larger projects, such as “The
Trial of Odysseus”. Our central
analytical focus is mastering the
structure and skills of the 昀椀veparagraph essay, an essential
foundation upon which students’
writing develops through Upper School English. Students hone these skills while
scrutinizing a variety of texts, challenging themselves to expand their conception
of “a journey”, and investigating nuanced differences of theme and character
across stories. Texts may include Emily Wilson’s translation of Homer’s The
Odyssey, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching
God, the 1986 昀椀lm Stand by Me, a selection of contemporary short stories, selected
poetry, and more.
