Junior English

This class is designed as journey of exploration. Grade 11 students typically are searching for an identity, who are they and who will they be, what will they do for work, where will they live, what type of relationships do they want?

Throughout the course students will read, write, discuss and research topics like:

love, fear, trust, friends, relationships, meaning of life, loyalty, motivation, stress, family, heroism, love, happiness, culture, acceptance, detachment, conformity, non-conformity, adventure, individualism

The content of the class will be made up of two non fiction novels, one fictional account and one unit on storytelling

The order will be:

Dates are tentative and subject to change

TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE--- September 8th-October 9th

Tuesdays With Morrie Mitch Albom

Synopsis

Albom is a successful sports columnist for the Detroit Free Press. After seeing his former sociology professor Morrie Schwartz appear on Nightline, Albom phones Schwartz, and is prompted to travel to Massachusetts to visit him. An ensuing newspaper strike allows Albom to visit Schwartz every week, on Tuesdays. The book recounts each of the fourteen visits Albom made to Schwartz, supplemented with Schwartz's lectures, life experiences, and interspersed with both flashbacks and allusions to contemporary events.

After being diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Morrie's final days are spent giving his former student Mitch his final lesson of life. The novel is divided into 14 different "days" that Mitch Albom spent with his professor Morrie. Throughout these days, Mitch and Morrie discuss various topic important to life and living. The novel also recounts Mitch's memories of Morrie as a professor.[3]

INTO THE WILD--- October 12th- November 13th

Into the Wild Summary

Into the Wild is the true story of Chris McCandless, a young Emory graduate who is found dead in the Alaskan wilderness in September 1992, when he is twenty-four. McCandless grows up in wealthy Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., and is a very gifted athlete and scholar, who from an early age shows deep intensity, passion, and a strict moral compass. After graduating from high school McCandless spends the summer alone on a road trip across the country, during which he discovers that his father secretly had a second family during Chris’s childhood. McCandless returns home and starts as a freshman at Emory, but his anger over this betrayal and his parents’ keeping it from him grows worse over time.

By the time that McCandless is a senior at Emory, he lives monastically, has driven away most of his friends with his intensity and moral certitude, and barely keeps in touch with his parents. He lets his parents think that he is interested in law school, but instead, after graduating with honors, he donates his $24,000 savings anonymously to charity, gets in his car, and drives away without telling anyone where he is going, abandoning the use of his real name along the way. He never contacts his parents or sister, Carine, again.

Not too long after leaving Atlanta, McCandless deserts his car in the desert after a flash flood wets the engine, and from then on, he hitchhikes around the Northwest, getting jobs here and there but not staying anywhere for long, often living on the streets, and keeping as little money and as few possessions as he can. During this time he gets to know a few people rather closely, and everyone admires his intensity and willingness to live completely by his beliefs, but he avoids true intimacy.

After about two years of itinerant travel, McCandless settles on a plan to go to Alaska and truly live in the wilderness, completely alone, and with very few supplies, to see if he can do it, to push himself to the very extremes. He spends a few months preparing, learning all he can about hunting, edible plants, etc, and then he leaves South Dakota, where he’d been working, and hitchhikes to Fairbanks. Those whom he tells about the plan all warn him that he needs to be better prepared, or should wait until later in the spring, but he is adamant and stubborn.

In April of 1992 McCandless gets dropped off near Mt. McKinley, and hikes into the wilderness. He spends the next sixteen weeks hunting small game, foraging, reading, and living in a deserted bus made to be a shelter for hunters, not seeing a single human the entire time. He is successful for the most part, although he loses significant weight. In late July, however, McCandless probably eats some moldy seeds, and the mold contains a poison that essentially causes him to starve to death, no matter how much he eats, and he is too weak to gather food anyway. McCandless is quickly incapacitated by the poison. Realizing he is going to die, he writes a goodbye message, and a few weeks later some hunters find his body in the bus.

STORYTELLING-- November 16th- December 4th

THE THINGS THEY CARRIED-- December7th-January 19th

Tim O'Brien, in his novel The Things They Carried, tells the story of the men of Alpha Company, a squad of soldiers in the Vietnam War. O'Brien cuts through the veil of romanticized war to show these men as heroic, flawed, loyal, afraid, and above all - human.

The Things They Carried main message is the extreme power of storytelling. Stories can broaden imagination, they make memories, and replace thoughts. Stories continue when people don't, and stories save lives.

LEARNING ALTERNATIVES Course/Class expectations...

• GIVENS

• We want you in school!!!!!

• We care about you

• We respect you as a person and as a learner

• We are ready, willing and able to work with you to help you

• We cannot change you, but we can provide a compassionate and safe environment in which you can do the work to make the changes necessary to achieve your goals.

• RESPECT is fundamental in our collective philosophy

• DISRESPECT is not only inappropriate, it is unacceptable

• Negative behavior affects and impacts the learning of others

• You own and are responsible for, your actions and behaviors

• No one has the rights to disturb the learning of others

EXPECTATIONS

• Attend school everyday

• Be on time for school and class everyday

• Come prepared to class with your books and materials

• Utilize and communicate with the resources available i.e. Tom, Tania, Courtney, counselors etc.. The classroom is not the place for you to work out your personal issues. Please Talk To Us!!

• Complete and homework in a timely manner

• Be respectful to staff and students and to your classroom

• In keeping with the SPHS Honor Code, your cell phone will be off at all times in class, unless with permission of the teacher or needed for academic reasons

• In keeping with the SPHS Honor Code, your headphones will be off your ears and your music will be off during class time. We will indicate when an appropriate time is to use them

• Be attentive and quiet when a teacher or other students are talking

• Focus on yourself, not what others are doing or not doing in class

• STUDENTS WILL SUBMIT WORK THROUGH

• Google Classroom and Email

• Assignments should be expected each class either in person or remote