2024-2025 Course Flipbook v2 - Flipbook - Page 28
ENGLISH 10: SELF AND SOCIETY
In English 10, students explore a diversity of texts from around the world to investigate
the tensions that exist, both positive and negative, between individuals and societies.
Units are organized as case studies to unpack relevant cultural, traditional, historical,
literary, and other backgrounds in addition to deepening close reading skills. Building on
the notion that literature acts as both a window and a mirror, students are challenged
to make meaning of complex texts with an increasing level of independence, building
connections between the stories and themselves, recognizing deeper truths of the human
experience. Students develop their argumentative writing skills to increase authentic
voice and personal connection to the texts, as well as demonstrate mastery of literary
concepts like defamiliarization, sensory imagery, and binary opposition. Throughout
the year, students grapple with their identities and ideologies to interrogate how they
experience a text, generate informed analysis of it, and understand connections to
the world around them. Course texts may include Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime, Chinua
Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman, Yann Martel’s
The Life of Pi, Alexander Solzenhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and more.
ENGLISH
ENGLISH 11: AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES AND POSSIBILITIES
“... Because being American is more than a pride we inherit. / It’s the past we step
into, and how we repair it.” Amanda Gorman’s words in the 2021 Inauguration
Poem “The Hill We Climb” express the blessings and responsibilities of “being
American,” providing a 昀椀tting backdrop for English 11. Students engage a range of
American literature to intertextually explore the challenges associated with being
a mindful member of society and our responsibility to strengthen and improve it.
We probe questions about American culture and experience through thematic
investigation of texts, ranging from poems to plays and novels. This course
emphasizes the development of literary analysis and academic writing skills to
practice argumentation, original research, and independent thinking. Students use