Course Description: Honors English III is specially designed for students who revel in reading quickly with a high degree of comprehension, whose analytical writing is already advanced, and who exhibit insatiable curiosity about literature. While it is not officially an AP course, students are prepared for and are expected to take the English Literature and Composition AP Exam in May. In addition, the course continues work done on vocabulary in the freshman and sophomore years using Jerome Shostak’s Vocabulary Workshop series. Students write papers throughout the year on topics of an interpretive and analytical nature.

The major emphasis of the course surveys American literature. Honors English III students are expected to move through this survey rapidly and more thoroughly than their peers in the standard level. Major titles in this section include: The Scarlet Letter, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, My Antonia, The Awakening, The Age of Innocence, The Sun Also Rises and The Great Gatsby. Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is also contextualized within an intensive examination of the dramatic tradition. Plays examined in this also unit include: Macbeth, Hamlet, and Dr. Faustus. This survey course further reflects upon the lyric tradition in the spring term as a way to hone analytical skills for the spring AP Exam. America’s two great poets, Whitman and Dickinson, are located in the lyric tradition with other major poets, such as William Shakespeare and John Donne. During this focus, each student produces a major critical research paper on the work of a poet of his or her own choosing.

Prerequisite: permission of the department chair or academic dean.

Crowsnest Rules


  • Remember required texts and bring only water;
  • Value and participate in one conversation;
  • Follow dress code because it saves more time for learning;
  • Use your computer as a 21st century learning tool;
  • Prepare your bladder for as if class were a job interview. If you really have to go, leave quietly and leave your cell phone on your desktop. That said, I hope you would take care of business before a job interview and the start of class. We are fortunate to be near a restroom on the third floor.
  • The protocol (steps) for the intellectual reflection (punishment, if you will) for those who need more help managing their laptop in class will be for that student to research an article that explains best for him or her how multitasking is a myth. Students can research a variety of sources, and ideally he or she will find one that best conveys the idea to a high school student. The student can then create a blog post and explain what he or she learned and explicate the most important aspect of the article. Here are other posts from our category on the blog:
  • http://digitalcrowsnest.wordpress.com/category/myth-of-multitasking/


The Myth of Multitasking. Below are some links to begin your search. You can use these as starting points or find another credible source for your critique. I am also open to conversations that approach this issue from the other perspective. Nevertheless, there are many great brains on my side. On Chirsten Rosen's The New Atlantis web page, I found this great quotation: "In one of the many letters he wrote to his son in the 1740s, Lord Chesterfield offered the following advice: “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.” To Chesterfield, singular focus was not merely a practical way to structure one’s time; it was a mark of intelligence. “This steady and undissipated attention to one object, is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation, are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind.” (http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-myth-of-multitasking).