Hello and welcome. I am so excited for this school year. I am thrilled to be teaching AP Lit and English IV because I truly enjoy the complex and fascinating literary works that we will be reading and discussing. I am available to answer questions and provide whatever support you need as we begin the new school year.

What is English IV? English IV focuses primarily on British Literature. The course takes a wide, historical sweep of the literature of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. The course examines the Anglo-Saxon Period, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the rise of the novel as a literary form, the Romantic Period, the Victorian Period, and writings from the Modern Period after WWII and up to the currrent date.

What to expect from classes this Fall: We have much ground to make up after the challenges and reduced expectations brought about by the realities of remote and hybrid learning. Catching up, resharpening our skills will require that far more effort will be expected of each student. Group work and individual classwork will be deliberate, focused, and fast-paced. If you have trouble keeping up or if you are falling behind, see me immediately about tutoring and Husky Time. Your senior year is critical to your future success, whatever your plans.

What do you need to buy/procure: 3 ring notebook and paper, blue and black pens, markers, highlighers, sticky notes, comp books (optional). We will discuss what novels need to be purchased when class begins. For now, hold off on buying books. We may have them available, or we may alter choices.

AP Students must complete their Summer Reading as soon as possible. Here is the link to your assignment. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D4pticw2w4-YBfw5JCU3-Rwb-_EINdoLUcet5jhMnl0/edit

Welcome to English IV and AP Literature and Composition

Why do we study English?

In other words, why do we read? As high school students, studying English is not merely an examination of language, genre, and technique. Reading and studying English is an exploration of what makes us human. It is a connection to people and ideas from different times, places, and cultures. Reading deepens our understanding of the world.

Here are some favorite quotes on books and reading:

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.” ~Carl Sagan

“The object we call a book is not the real book, but its potential, like a musical score or seed. It exists fully only in the act of being read; and its real home is inside the head of the reader, where the symphony resounds, the seed germinates. A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another.” ~Rebecca Solnit

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” ~James Baldwin

“We ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?” ~Franz Kafka

In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like a night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do. ~C.S. Lewis