Religious Studies 103: Literature of Covenant

How do stories reveal to us who we are? How does our literature create our shared values and community? This course seeks to create a basic foundation of understanding the Hebrew Bible. In investigating the many types of literature within the Hebrew Bible, students will better understand the various ways to read texts and apply shared narratives to their own individual and communal experiences. As a lasting record of “covenant,” students will understand the Bible as constitutive for how different faith communities have come to understand themselves and their identities, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Students will conclude the course examining the relational and sexual dimension of human experience, probing covenantal wisdom for guidance in discerning the healing and liberative nature of human relationship.

Religious Studies 201: Christology

At a pivotal moment in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus asks his disciples “Who do you say that I am?”  The confusion that ensues among his followers is emblematic of the struggle that Christians and non-Christians alike have had throughout history to answer that very question.  In this course, students will be challenged to offer their own unique contributions to the discourse on the identity of Jesus.  They will grapple directly with the question Jesus posed to his disciples by developing responses based on multiple and intersecting paradigms: the personal, the historical, the theological, and the anthropological to name just a few.  Effectively engaging with the course will lead to greater skills in the areas of critical thinking, cultural competency, and religious imagination, among others.

English 103H

The major difference between English 100 and English 103H is in the number of books that are read and their inherent difficulty, in the mode of instruction in the classroom, in the student initiative required, and in the number of writing assignments and their increasing and various difficulty.

 Class receives honors weighting in SI weighted GPA

English 303H

English 303H fulfills all the goals of English 300 but requires the students to read several more books and to write longer and more (approximately 20) papers.  These papers require a good understanding of the forms of literature in order that the students will be able to formulate and support accurate, interpretative theses about the literature under study.  At the end of 303H, students usually take the AP English Language and Composition examination.

Class receives honors weighting in SI weighted GPA and UC/CSU GPA calculations.

English 300

English 300 covers the literature of the United States from the Puritan Era to the present.  All the forms of literature which have been studied specifically in themselves during the first two years are now studied as they emerge historically through the imaginative lives of major U.S. authors.  This course complements the study of American History, which is also taken during the junior year.  The students’ writing aims at greater and greater control over the expository essay and specifically at developing analytical theses on literature. Students will write at least twelve papers during the year in various rhetorical modes including the personal narrative (at least 1), the expository essay (5-7), the synthesis essay, the timed quick-write, and the creative composition.   After consulting with their teachers, students taking this course may opt to take the AP Language and Composition examination.  Both this course and the honors course prepare students to pass the Junior Writing Exam taken in the second semester.  Students who do not pass this exam with an acceptable score must take Literature and Composition:  Non-fiction during the senior year.

English 203H

The major difference between this honors course and the regular sophomore course is in the number of books that are read and their inherent difficulty, in the mode of instruction in the classroom, in the student initiative required, and in the number of writing assignments (generally 2-3 additional essays per year) along with their increasing and various difficulty.

 

Class receives honors weighting in SI weighted GPA

English 200

English 200 continues the course of study begun in the freshman year.  Skills learned the previous year are refined, expanded, and enhanced.  Basic grammar is reviewed and new material introduced throughout the year.  The lower division writing sequence continues with a review of paragraph writing, which leads into the year’s emphasis on descriptive, narrative, and expository essay writing.  Students will write approximately 10-12 papers in a variety of rhetorical modes.  The writing becomes not only more formal, but increased in length as well with students writing multi-paragraph expository essays by the end of the first quarter.  The reading of literature includes all the major genres: novel, drama, poetry, short story, and essay; however, the study of literature shifts from an organization by form to an organization by themes that reveal an insight into the human condition.

English 100

The purpose of freshman English is three-fold: 1) to master certain grammatical material that will aid in the discussion of composition, 2) to begin a systematic approach to writing, and 3) to identify certain literary concepts in a variety of literary genres.  To achieve these goals, English 100 presents the incoming students with a course of study that exposes them to the forms of literature: the short story, non-fiction essay, poem, drama, and novel.  Freshman English also presents the students with various writing assignments that will start them on the process of building a personal writing style. The subjects for these assignments move from the students’ own experiences to topics related to their reading, and the movement during the course of the year is from narrative and descriptive writing to writing that is more expository in nature.  Writing assignments generally will progress from one-page papers at the beginning of the year to longer essays at the end of the year.  By the end of the course, the student will have written approximately 10-12 papers in a variety of rhetorical modes including creative, descriptive, narrative, expository, and literary analysis writing.  The student will also have completed at least one multi-paragraph expository essay.

AP English Literature and Composition

This full-year course is intended for the seniors who qualify in two ways: First, they must have the desire to sustain a high degree of effort throughout their senior year; second, they must have the proven ability to do accelerated work.  The course itself has two goals:  1) to prepare the students to pass the AP exam administered in May of the senior year, and 2) to prepare them to take their place in a sophomore English class at whatever college they attend.  The content of the course is divided into two major parts.  The first is the study of literature required by the AP exam.  Here the students become familiar with the novel, short story, poem, drama, and essay, particularly in their historical development.  In the second part, the students work at perfecting their writing skills.  Here they do two separate kinds of practice: 1) that aimed at proficiency for the exam itself, and 2) that aimed at proficiency in written expression for college level audiences.  Admission to this course is by application, recommendation of the junior year teacher, and approval of the Chair.  English 403AP is a senior English course in which the 1.00 increment is awarded by the UC system.

Class receives honors weighting in SI weighted GPA and UC/CSU GPA calculations

English 430: Modern American Authors

NOTE:  This course will not be offered for the 2024-2025 school year. It may be available the following year.

In this course we will do an in-depth study of modern authors, contextualizing these voices as they fit into our cultural identity.  In this one semester course, we will read short stories, creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and song lyrics.  We will examine the narrator and the self, analyzing the way American individuality has shifted American literature.  We will identify and analyze literary devices and structures in popular texts, and use these as models for our own creative writing.  Formal grammar and vocabulary lessons will focus on clarification of voice.  In addition to standard 5 paragraph analytical essays, we will write creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and a multi-genre research paper.