English
This was a one-semester class taught by Pam Baker. We wrote two research papers and a short story, and read three books. We studied the evolution of writing and literature in America from the time of the Puritans up through the post-modern era, we examined the use of literature as a form of protest, and we took an in-depth look at the relationship between culture and the media (among many other things).
As an Honors student, I also learned 180 vocabulary words that related to the class's subject matter, read two additional books, read interesting selections of writing, and participated in Socratic seminars.
Check out the "Books" tab for information about the five books I read, and look to the "Essay" tabs to read my essays. You can read my short story here. Below, you will find a list of the shorter poems and selections that I read as a part of the class as well.
As an Honors student, I also learned 180 vocabulary words that related to the class's subject matter, read two additional books, read interesting selections of writing, and participated in Socratic seminars.
Check out the "Books" tab for information about the five books I read, and look to the "Essay" tabs to read my essays. You can read my short story here. Below, you will find a list of the shorter poems and selections that I read as a part of the class as well.
List of Short Readings (honors on the left, class on the right)
"On Civil Disobedience", essay, Henry David Thoreau
"To the Mountaintop", speech, Martin Luther King Jr. "Thinking in Education", excerpt, John Dewey "A Rounded Version: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences", excerpt, Howard Gardner "A Theory of Justice", excerpt, John Rawls "The Central Human Functional Capabilities", excerpt, Martha Nussbaum "Shakespeare's Sister", essay, Virginia Woolf "Women's Place in Man's Life Cycle", excerpt, Carol Gilligan "The Qualities of the Prince", excerpt, Niccolo Machiavelli "Total Domination", excerpt, Hannah Arendt "Inaugural Address", speech, John F. Kennedy "A More Perfect Union", speech, Barack Obama "Learning in the Age of Television", article, Neil Postman "Still Separate, Still Unequal: America's Educational Apartheid", article, Jonathan Kozol "The Position of Poverty", essay, John Kenneth Galbraith "Why the Rich Are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer", essay, Robert B. Reich "Dehumanizing People and Euphemizing War", essay, Haig A. Bosmajian "Defining the 'American Indian': a Case Study in the Language of Suppression", essay, Haig A. Bosmajian "The Aim of Man", excerpt, Aristotle "Morality and Religion", excerpt, Iris Murdoch "Natural Selection", excerpt, Charles Darwin "Nonmoral Nature", essay, Stephen J. Gould "The Sunless Sea", excerpt, Rachel Carson "The Mystery of Dark Matter", essay, Michio Kaku ((DISCRIMINATION WRITINGS)) |
"Song of Myself", poem, Walt Whitman
"America", poem, Walt Whitman "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For", excerpt, Henry David Thoreau "The End of Solitude", article, William Deresiewicz "XXVII" and other selected poems, Emily Dickinson "The Cask of Amontillado", short story, Edgar Allan Poe "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", short story, Mark Twain "The Meaning of July 4th", speech, Frederick Douglass "Uncle Tom's Cabin", excerpt, Harriet Beecher Stowe "To Build a Fire", short story, Jack London "The Yellow Wallpaper", short story, Charlotte Perkins Gilman "A Clean Well-Lighted Place", short story, Earnest Hemingway "Thank You Ma'am", short story, Langston Hughes "Howl", excerpt, Allen Ginsburg "America", poem, Allen Ginsburg "A Supermarket in California", poem, Allen Ginsburg "Constantly Risking Absurdity", poem, Laurence Ferlingetti "Bluebird", poem, Charles Bukowski "How to Tell a True War Story", short story, Tim O'Brien "Defending Walt Whitman", poem, Sherman Alexie "Protest Literature", introduction, John Stauffer "Who Are You?", excerpt, Vincent R. Rugierro "Letter From Birmingham Jail", letter, Marin Luther King Jr. "Crimes Against Humanity", essay, Ward Churchill "Propaganda: How Not to be Bamboozled", article, D.W. Cross "Doubts About Doublespeak", article, William Lutz "With These Words, I Can Sell You Anything", essay, William Lutz "Shitty First Drafts", essay, Anne Lamott "Writing for an Audience", essay, Linda Flower "How to Write With Style", essay, Kurt Vonnegut "The Case for Short Words", essay, Richard Lederer |
Fly on the Wall Project
One of the projects that we did in 11th grade English was the Fly on the Wall Project. It was an integrated project between biology and English. For the English portion of the project, we caught an insect and wrote a very short story, then a longer short story, from that insect's perspective. The shorter story dealt with the insect's adventures in our bedroom, and the longer story was about the insect's adventures out in its natural habitat. I merged my stories into one longer story, which can be read at the link in the third paragraph. Our final product included a picture of a spot in our room from the insect's point of view. The picture at left is a view of the underside of my bed. My story is essentially twelve pages of an ant having an existential crisis in the middle of an insect war.