English Department Curriculum
The curriculum in our English Department merges creativity with critical thinking.
Our upper-division electives are especially enticing. Through them, you can travel the Mississippi River with Huck Finn, experience the Jazz Age with Gatsby, see the Salinas Valley through Steinbeck's eyes, or follow the curse of three witches in Macbeth. By the time you graduate, you will have been introduced to a number of literary works written by women and men from a variety of cultures, ethnicities and eras.
Freshman Courses
English 9
English 9: The Quest for Identity
Grade: 9
Credits: 10
College Prep: UC/CSU “b” English
How do we, as individuals, define our identity? How do we identify ourselves and how do we explore the identities of others through literature? English 9 builds the foundations of literary analysis beginning with short stories, moving on to longer expository essays, studying a full novel and concluding with a portfolio project. This introductory class has two major goals: teach students how to express their ideas effectively through language and how to interpret the language of others. The ninth grade composition program begins with helping students to write clear and unified single paragraphs, then composition expands into the development of longer essays. Through the analysis of literature, students will consider the identities of the characters they are reading about and use that as a lens to analyze their own personal identities and values.
Honors English 9
Honors English 9: The Quest for Identity
Grade: 9
Credits: 10
Prerequisite: All students accepted to Presentation are welcome to take a proficiency exam from the English Department if they want to be considered for Honors English 9. Upon completing the test, the department will evaluate a student’s scores and recommend placement.
College Prep: UC/CSU “b” English
How do we, as individuals, define our identity? How do we identify ourselves and how do we explore the identities of others through literature? Honors English 9A is designed to teach you two things: how to express your ideas effectively through language and how to interpret the language of others. Honors English 9 will cover the same skills as English 9, building the foundations of literary analysis beginning with short stories, moving to longer expository essay, studying a full novel and concluding with a portfolio project; however, Honors English 9 has two major differences: the readings will be more challenging and there are higher expectations for composition. Honors English 9 is designed for students who want an extra challenge in their English classes. Students in Honors English 9 read more difficult and complex texts that will engage with deeper concepts. Students will also be expected to write more complicated argumentative essays over the course of the year with higher expectations for their composition.
Sophomore Courses
English 10
English 10: A Band of Rebels
Grade: 10
Credits: 10
College Prep: UC/CSU “b” English
Students in this course will explore the question: what happens when you don’t fit in or rebel against the dominant values of a society? English 10 emphasizes four genres: the short story, the novel, the play, and poetry. Each one will explore how individuals who don’t fit in deal with and rebel, in both subtle and drastic ways, against the societies that are holding them back. This class is designed to teach you two things: how to express your ideas effectively through language and how to interpret the language of others. This will improve your knowledge and comprehension of how to construct ideas in writing so you can be well understood. English 10B will focus specifically on the analysis of fiction as well as non-fiction. This class will apply the skills of close reading and analytical writing to understanding how authors use both fictional and nonfictional techniques to make arguments through texts. Lastly, we will examine how these texts affect our own growth — both personal and within society. Our essential question for this work is: How do people grow in society?
Honors English 10
Honors English 10: A Band of Rebels
Grade: 10
Credits: 10
Prerequisite: B+ in each semester of Honors English 9 or A- in each semester of English 9
College Prep: UC/CSU “b” English
Students in this course will explore the question: what happens when you don’t fit in or rebel against the dominant values of a society? English 10 emphasizes four genres: the short story, the novel, the play, and poetry. Each one will explore how individuals who don’t fit in deal with and rebel, in both subtle and drastic ways, against the societies that are holding them back. Along with the essential questions for each unit, we will be working on close-reading skills and thinking about the importance of each text in the world around us. The reading load in Honors English 10 is significantly more difficult than English 10. Students read Great Expectations, a 600 page Victorian novel in the fall. The language and length of this novel, as well as the skills expected, will be too challenging for students who do not love to read. Students also have to make multi-faceted arguments about themes that run throughout the entire length of the novel. This course is designed for the high-achieving English student who has a strong background in reading, grammar and writing.
Junior Courses
English 11
English 11: The American Dream and British Limits
Grade: 11
Credits: 10
College Prep: UC/CSU “b” English
English 11 is a survey course that will have a different focus for each semester. The fall semester will focus on American literature, where students will seek to define the term “American.” What are American values and do they contradict each other? What exactly is the “American Dream” and is it possible? In the spring semester, through British literature, students will define happiness and explain, as well as critique, the limits of what British society’s definition of happiness is. Students will explore how society defines happiness in the face of growing dependence on technology, in the past as well as the present. This course will take a look at the merits and downfalls of British society and how the debates the authors had about their society can be applied to our own. Our society faces many of the same challenges these authors sought to explore, and we will contemplate how the same debates occur in our context.
Upper Division Courses
AP English Literature
AP English Literature: Generational Conflicts and ‘The Other’
Grade: 11
Credits: 10
Prerequisite: B+ unweighted English GPA in English; B in each semester of Honors English 10
College Prep: UC/CSU “b” English
For the first semester of AP English, students will explore how conflicts between family and generations play out, especially through Emily Bronte’s classic, Wuthering Heights. In the second semester, we will ask: Who does society define as essential and who does it define as being on the outside as “the Other”? This will be the focus of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Advanced Placement English Literature is a year-long course and is designed for the English student who wants to challenge themselves. This course teaches students to closely read and analyze texts to see how authors make choices around tone, word choice, structure and elements of narrative to create meaning for readers. AP English Literature has dual goals: to prepare students for the AP Literature Exam and mimic a first-year college level English literature course. This class is a year-long commitment and is significantly more rigorous than English 11A/B. AP Exam note: Although the focus of this class is not exclusively on the AP English Literature Exam, we will be spending time preparing for it and students are encouraged to take it in May.
Honors English 3 and 4
Honors English 3 and 4: The Western Cannon and World Literature - Going Beyond AP
Grade: 12
Credits: 10
Prerequisite: B+ unweighted English GPA; B in each semester of AP English Literature
College Prep: UC/CSU “b” English
Honors English 3 and 4 builds upon the skills taught in AP English Literature in the junior year and pushes students to go “beyond AP.” This senior-level course will challenge and interrogate the structures of AP English Literature in order to apply rigorously challenging concepts within the study of literature. The course will spend the year asking: Why do we resent some societal norms and practices, and how do we change this resentment into one of empowerment through defiance and social activism? Through the lens of what Western society considers “classics” in the fall and a non-Western, world literature focus in the spring students will engage with literature that teaches us about ourselves and those around us. As an honors-level class, students will do more reading, more writing, more analysis with higher expectations than the other senior-level electives.
Senior English Electives
(for seniors not taking Honors English 3 and 4)
Individual and Society
Individual and Society: Fitting In and Standing Out
Grade: 12
Credits: 5
College Prep: UC/CSU “b” English
The Individual and Society is a chance to examine where and how we "fit" into our social structure. We will read about heroes and antiheroes who have defied social norms, and through that defiance have forced the reader to examine his/her own morals and life choices. The works that we read demonstrate times when we must live according to the laws given to us in order to lead an honest existence; however, they also demonstrate times when we must stand against the crowd and determine on our own what is truly right. We will address the question as to whether it is natural to live alone or in community, as well as discuss our responsibility and individual roles in society during times when we find injustice. This semester-long course will engage students in issues of gender, race and justice.
Death and Literature
Death in Literature: The Paradox of Death
Grade: 12
Credits: 5
College Prep: UC/CSU “b” English
Content warning: This course contains extended discussions of death, suicide, suffering with long-term illness and war. Students who are sensitive to discussions of death, depression, anxiety, mental health, mental illness or thoughts of suicide should consider taking another senior-level course.
How does society’s attitude about morality shape the way we live and die? Death comes to everything that lives. It is the sentence that hangs over us from the moment we are born. Knowing that we have to die, we often fear death, the great unknown, as a child fears the dark. Nevertheless, it is better to face death in a sensible way than to deny it. There are things to be learned about death and dying that we will investigate and discuss openly during the semester-long course. What are the moral questions involved in the issues of capital punishment, euthanasia, suicide, and war? What can a person do to help another who is terminally ill? What happens after we die? How does the Church view such questions?
Modern Playwrights
Modern Playwrights: Humanity and Modernity
Grade: 12
Credits: 5
College Prep: UC/CSU “b” English
What does it mean to be human? How do plays help us answer that question? This semester-long course will utilize plays written from the 1950s–present to lead students through a myriad of questions about their lives; namely, this course seeks to define what it means to be a human in modern times. Through existentialist plays like Waiting for Godot, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, students will analyze the nature of the human experience. Also, plays such as The Piano Lesson, Hadestown and The Humans, will challenge our concept of family, love, tradition, and trust. Students will read and analyze various texts to both sharpen their reading, writing, and critical thinking skills and apply themes and questions from the texts to their own lives, taking time to reflect on their place in their journeys through life.
British Literature
British Literature: Monster Edition
Grade: 12
Credits: 5
College Prep: UC/CSU “b” English
Author Emma Cole said it perfectly: "...our souls may be consumed by shadows, but that doesn't mean we have to behave as monsters." Get ready to delve into the darkness within British Literature: “Monster Edition.” This semester-long course dives into the thin line between what makes a monster and what makes a human, and in the process explores the impact fear, religion, and societal rule have on defining someone as person or monster. Through novels such as Dracula, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Coraline and The Picture of Dorian Gray, students will explore the concepts of: foreignness and "The Other,” the ethics of science, reason, the supernatural, and the duality of human nature. Students will explore essential questions of the course, such as: What defines a monster? From where does the term "monster" originate? How does religion in general, and Western religion specifically, shape social rule in regards to women? How are women considered “monsters” by society?