English
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Department Philosophy & Goals
The English Department intends that our students grow during their four years of English in their ability to write well (with clarity, precision, energy, grace and truth) and to read well (understanding with heart and mind the direct meaning and more distant implications of words, images, characters and events).
on Writing:
On average, each student is asked to write three significant texts each quarter, just under fifty essays in his four years.
Most of the writing assignments ask students to defend an idea logically and ethically. However, teachers do assign writing that calls upon their students to respond imaginatively and emotionally to events in their lives, for example, the Freshman person-from-the-past essay, the Sophomore narratives, the Junior college admission essay, and the Senior fiction-writing class.
Teachers sequence the writing assignments to increase each student's reliance upon his own ideas.
on Reading:
Each student is asked to read as much as time allows to improve his ability to understand both the explicit and implicit meaning in written and non-written texts.
The reading and subsequent discussions afford teachers and students the opportunity to consider matters of justice and morality central to our school's Christian mission, for example, Huck's counter-cultural defense of Jim in Huck Finn, the McPheron brothers' charity in Plainsong, Othello's abuse of Desdemona in Othello and Evan Boland's definition of love in her poem "Quarantine."
Teachers sequence the reading assignments to match their students' abilities and interests. Seniors choose semester-length courses that we offer in response to a survey of their interests.
