English

Graduation requirement: English is required every semester

Students at Pennington can expect to have enriching experiences studying literature, writing, and language with English teachers who are enthusiastic about their discipline and trained to meet their students' needs. Through the daily disciplines of active reading, writing, and discussing, students become increasingly adept at making meaning for themselves. Asking questions of texts and one another, developing critical judgments, appreciating artistry, and speaking and writing clearly and precisely, students become knowledgeable and self-aware learners. Attuned to the power of words, graduates depart Pennington knowing how to read discerningly for meaning; how to write efficiently, powerfully, and artfully; how to use language persuasively and precisely; and how to participate mindfully in a community of scholars.

Literary Forms and Critical Writing: Grade 9

Literary Forms and Critical Writing
Grade 9
1 credit
In this course, students explore a spectrum of literary forms, including the short story, the novel, poetry, and drama; in doing so, they begin to consider how all ideas are shaped by the manner of their expression. Students investigate how the components of narrative structure, the formal properties of genre, and the elements of literary style contribute to a reader’s broader understanding of and personal connection with texts. In conjunction with their World History course, students practice essential cross-disciplinary skills such as student-centered discussion, close reading, and the composition of academic essays. Developing their writing with a focus on clear claims, in-depth reasoning, sentence-level fluency, and organized paragraphs, students learn the fundamental elements of independent critical thinking and expression that will serve them throughout their Pennington career: analysis, reflection, and argumentation. Texts may include Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, Acevedo’s The Poet X, M.T. Anderson’s Feed, Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese, selected short stories, and selected poetry.

Literary Forms and Critical Writing–Honors: Grade 9

Literary Forms and Critical Writing–Honors*
Grade 9
1 credit
In this Honors course, students with advanced reading and writing skills explore a spectrum of literary forms, including the short story, the novel, poetry, drama, and the epic; in doing so, they begin to consider how all ideas are shaped by the manner of their expression. With an accelerated reading pace, more challenging texts, and a focus on discerning and expressing nuance, students investigate how the components of narrative structure, the formal properties of genre, and the elements of literary style contribute to a reader's broader understanding of and personal connection with texts. In conjunction with their World History course, students practice essential cross-disciplinary skills such as student-centered discussion, close reading, and the composition of academic essays. Developing their writing, with a focus on clear claims, in-depth reasoning, sentence-level fluency, and organized paragraphs, students learn the fundamental elements of independent critical thinking and expression that will serve them throughout their Pennington career: analysis, reflection, and argumentation. Texts may include Dickens's Great Expectations, Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Acevedo’s The Poet X, Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Martel’s Life of Pi, selected short stories, and selected poetry.
*Prerequisite: Permission of the department

American Identities:Grade 10

American Identities
Grade 10
1 credit

This survey of American literature, focusing on the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries, examines its selections through the overlapping lenses of personal and national identity. As they study the journeys of others to discover and define themselves in America, students reflect on their own experiences, asking in what ways, if any, is there a unifying American experience? How does our environment—American or otherwise—shape us? Students build on their earlier study of the fundamentals of close reading and academic composition by thinking critically about the connections between the personal, the social, and the textual. Writing in a range of modes, students seek to express themselves persuasively through the use of details and ideas drawn from reading and discussion. Identifying their individual writing processes, students discover strengths, address weaknesses, and devise strategies for revision. Texts may include Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Krakauer’s Into the Wild, Kwok’s Girl in Translation, Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Everett’s James, Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, and Wilson’s Fences.

American Identities–Honors: Grade 10

American Identities—Honors*

Grade 10
1 credit

Embracing an accelerated pace, challenging texts, and the subtleties of literary analysis, this Honors survey of American literature examines its selections through the overlapping lenses of personal and national identity. As they study the journeys of others to discover and define themselves in America, students reflect on their own experiences, asking: in what ways, if any, is there a unifying American experience? How does our environment—American or otherwise—shape us? Students build on their earlier study of the fundamentals of close reading and academic composition by thinking critically about the connections between the personal, the social, and the textual. Identifying their individual writing processes, students discover strengths, address weaknesses, and devise strategies for revision. This, combined with careful study and mindful participation in seminars, acts as preparation for increasingly complex studies in English. Texts may include Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, Miller's Death of a Salesman, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Krakauer’s Into the Wild, and Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye.
*Prerequisite: Permission of the department

Rhetoric and the Modern World: Grade 11

Rhetoric and the Modern World
Grade 11
1 credit
With a focus on nonfiction texts, contemporary real-world questions, and the cultivation of one’s individual voice, this introductory course in rhetorical principles builds upon the independent critical thinking and writing skills developed in American Identities. For the first semester, students are introduced to the art of argumentation, developing their writing in three styles: close rhetorical analysis, synthesis of ideas, and general argumentation. In the second semester, students take these skills into the world through project-oriented units addressing topics such as conflict and resolution, climate change and the environment, justice in society, and cultural dissemination. Texts may include Lunsford et al’s Everything’s an Argument, Adiga’s The White Tiger, and Murata’s Convenience Store Woman.

AP English Language and Composition: Grade 11

AP English Language and Composition*
Grade 11
1 credit
This course strives to develop each student’s proficiency in critical reading and thinking, fluent writing, and effective speaking. Students read a broad selection of the kind of nonfiction that appears on the AP exam, as well as works of fiction, drama, and poetry. Regardless of the genre, students focus their attention on the essential elements of any composition: subject, purpose, audience, content, organization, and style. They also learn to identify rhetorical strategies and explore the range of effects of different strategies. In order to become more disciplined and self-aware writers, students address each stage of the writing process through repeated practice; sometimes they are obliged to complete the process in a relatively short time, and at other times the process extends over several days. Most compositions are expository, analytical, or argumentative and require students to express their understanding of primary and secondary sources that they learn to cite in MLA format. Finally, students regularly take practice AP examinations in and out of class.
*Prerequisite: Permission of the department

AP English Literature and Composition: Grade 12

AP English Literature and Composition*
Grade 12
1 credit

Structured as an introductory college English course, AP English Literature teaches motivated, capable, and interested seniors how to read and analyze great works of literature, including novels, plays, and, especially, poetry. Students are taught how to read each work with a critical awareness of the full range of its stylistic features, its structure, and its meaning. Students also develop an awareness of language and sharpen their skills in effective writing and critical reading. The course aims to teach students to write well about something important, to develop in them the skills of a sophisticated reader, and to instruct and encourage them to participate thoughtfully and effectively in discussions.
*Prerequisite: Permission of the department

Electives

Though the specific content and reading list for each elective varies, these courses share a set of core values and expectations:

Curricular commitment to a diversity of voices, texts, and perspectives
Class meetings frequently (at least once every seven-day cycle) led by students in a seminar, workshop, and/or presentation format
Reading assignments requiring students to annotate with a high degree of independent thinking
A substantial quantity of academic writing
A culminating assessment driven by independent interest and/or research, expressed in a final portfolio

Fall English Electives: Grades 10-12

Creative Writing

Creative Writing*
Grades 10-12
.5 credit
Whether you’re interested in the grotesque or the beautiful, the sinister or the sublime, the tragic or the comical, you have an opportunity to find and express your own style in this class. This course explores creative writing in several different forms, potentially including poetry, creative nonfiction, short stories, and screenwriting. Students read and discuss a variety of authors and poets while composing their own works in these genres. Obviously, this course is writing-intensive, but students need not have prior creative writing experience to succeed. Students who take this class should feel comfortable with sharing ideas and criticism with their fellow writers in a supportive workshop environment.
Offered fall semester
*This course offers an embedded Honors option for those students approved for Honors/AP work in English. See "Creative Writing Honors" below.
*Students in Grades 10 and 11: This course may only be taken in addition to a year-long English class. It does not reduce English course load requirements in later years.

Creative Writing–Honors

Creative Writing–Honors*
Grades 10-12
.5 credit
Meeting in the same workshop-style classroom as the standard-level Creative Writing course, students will explore the core tenets of creative writing described above, even as they learn more sophisticated compositional techniques and take on a longer, more intensive piece of creative writing iterated over multiple drafts.
Offered fall semester
*Prerequisite: Permission of the department
*Students in Grades 10 and 11: This course may only be taken in addition to a year-long English class. It does not reduce English course load requirements in later years.

Contemporary Literature

Contemporary Literature*
Grades 11-12
.5 credit
In your study of English, how many works of literature have you read in which the main character has access to the internet? How many of these works were written after you were born? Focusing on literature written in and around the twenty-first century, this course reckons with texts directly intended to speak to modern readers and circumstances. In their exploration of contemporary literature (literary prize-winners, modern bestsellers, and exemplars of young-adult fiction, among others), students attempt to define this potentially nebulous category: other than their proximity to 2020, what, if anything, do these works share? How have they (and we) been shaped by the major events and technological shifts of the last few decades? Students are also asked to engage with works that, by definition, have not yet stood the test of time, inviting us to consider what makes them timely, timeless, and/or destined to be forgotten.
Offered fall semester
*Students in Grade 11: This course may only be taken in addition to a year-long English class. It does not reduce English course load requirements in later years.

Gender, Sexuality, and Society

Gender, Sexuality, and Society*
Grades 11-12
.5 credit
Why, and in what ways, do men, women, and non-binary individuals experience the world differently? How do these differences shape our lives at home, in school, with our bodies, and inside our minds? This course asks these and many other questions about the intersection of gender and culture. Students think critically about texts that explore issues of masculinity and femininity while expanding traditional understandings of the gender binary. Using an interdisciplinary approach, they examine how history, media, literature, and film have shaped gender, thinking about how contemporary pop culture maintains or subverts traditional gender roles, especially in the areas of desire and sexuality. Students read, write, view films, and engage in daily discussion in an effort to fully address this complex topic.
Offered fall semester
*Students in Grade 11: This course may only be taken in addition to a year-long English class. It does not reduce English course requirements in later years.

The Good Life–Honors

The Good Life–Honors*
Grades 11-12
.5 credit
This honors-level, reading-intensive course in Religion and English takes up the philosophical question of the good life, or how to live a meaningful life. What does it mean to live well? Is there a purpose or end to human life? Is there anything we ought to do in order to live well? What does it mean to be responsible? How do theists engage the problem of evil? Is the good merely a matter of taste or preference? How should we think about humanity as a member of the democracy of species? The course explores such philosophical questions in a literary mode. The first quarter focuses attention on the form of the personal essay. The second quarter explores a close reading of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.
Offered fall semester
*Prerequisite: Religion and Ethics, English department approval for Honors/AP-level work
*Successful completion of the course also garners Religion credit.
*Students in Grade 11: This course may only be taken in addition to a year-long English class. It does not reduce English course load requirements in later years.

Journalism

Journalism*
Grades 10-12
.5 credit
What is journalism, and what role should it play in the communities of which it is a part? This course, organized around the production of newspaper articles and other forms of journalism for the Pennington community, will explore these questions in a project-driven classroom with a newsroom-style atmosphere. If you are looking to share your voice and explore a new mode of writing that moves beyond the expository essay, this is the course for you. After an opening consideration of the core tenets of journalism and some of its modes—news, features, opinion, arts/culture, and visual composition—the majority of the course will be devoted to students generating, composing, and editing pieces of journalism to be shared via the School’s publication of the Penntonian. Along the way, we will explore topics in journalistic bias, new media, and ethical reporting.
Offered fall and/or spring semesters, depending on enrollment
*This course offers an embedded Honors option for those students approved for Honors/AP work in English. See "Journalism–Honors" below.
*Students in Grades 10 and 11: This course may only be taken in addition to a year-long English class. It does not reduce English course load requirements in later years.

Journalism–Honors

Journalism–Honors*
Grades 10-12
.5 credit
Meeting in the same newsroom-style classroom as the standard-level Journalism course, students will learn the core tenets of journalism described above, even as they are entrusted with greater editorial responsibilities, take on an area of more intensive focus within their journalistic compositions, and explore investigative journalism.
Offered fall and/or spring semesters, depending upon enrollment
*Prerequisite: Permission of the department
*Students in Grades 10 and 11: this course may only be taken in addition to a year-long English class. It does not reduce English course load requirements in later years.

Journalism II–Honors

Journalism II–Honors*
Grades 11-12
.5 credit
For students who wish to continue their study of Journalism, this course offers multiple opportunities for advanced disciplinary study and application. Continuing with the project-based style of the introductory Journalism course, students take on a leadership role in the composition and editing of articles, compose a piece of longform journalism, and read deeply on a journalistic style or topic decided upon in collaboration with the instructor.
Offered fall and/or spring semesters, depending on enrollment
*Prerequisite: Journalism and permission of the department
*Students in Grade 11: This course may only be taken in addition to a year-long English class. It does not reduce English course load requirements in later years.

Spring English Electives: Grades 10-12

Fantastical Fiction: Grade 12

Fantastical Fiction
Grade 12
.5 credit
Not so long ago, language was considered to have magical properties, carrying with it an aura of mystery and power. Though hard to imagine today, its legacy remains— “grammar” comes from the same word as “glamor,” which means “enchantment,” while “spell” still has all sorts of magical and linguistic associations. Of course, authors of literature have never really stopped thinking about a novelist's ability to express the fantastical, and that is the focus of this class. Students read this literature of wondrous events, mythical pasts, speculative futures, and imaginary settings. While doing so, they ask: How are these works in conversation with the real world from which they appear to provide an escape? In what ways might they challenge us to question and debate ourselves, our behaviors, and the moral and social constructs of the present world? Analyzing and evaluating works drawn from genres including science fiction, magical realism, classical myth, fantasy, folklore, and the dystopian, students identify shared themes and literary elements in order to better understand the “spell” that these stories weave.
Offered spring semester

Journalism

Journalism–Honors

Journalism–Honors*
Grades 10-12
.5 credit
Meeting in the same newsroom-style classroom as the standard-level Journalism course, students will learn the core tenets of journalism described above, even as they are entrusted with greater editorial responsibilities, take on an area of more intensive focus within their journalistic compositions, and explore investigative journalism.
Offered fall and/or spring semesters, depending upon enrollment
*Prerequisite: Permission of the department
*Students in Grades 10 and 11: This course may only be taken in addition to a year-long English class. It does not reduce English course load requirements in later years.

Journalism II–Honors: Grades 11, 12

Literature and Visual Media: Grade 12

Literature and Visual Media
Grade 12
.5 credit
As the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” suggests, visual and verbal forms of expression are frequently pitted against each other. Yet from hieroglyphics, to children’s books, to a church’s stained glass, to comic books, to Instagram, the intertwining of words and images is ubiquitous when it comes to storytelling. This course considers how narratives are structured and ideas are communicated in modes that combine the verbal with the visual, with a possible focus on graphic novels, experimental literature, digital media, films, and/or television. It also considers the nature of literary adaptation—how different forms of media tell the same story in varied ways. Students learn how to “read” the language of a visual text, bringing close reading and critical skills to bear upon the hybrid forms of storytelling that immerse our cultures.
Offered spring semester

Literary Thesis Seminar–Honors: Grades 11, 12

Literary Thesis Seminar–Honors*
Grades 11-12
.5 credit
Have you encountered a text in one of your English classes and found yourself wishing that you could read more of the author's work? Are you an avid reader or writer with a stack of books to read or tabs of unfinished draft ideas? Do you find yourself thinking, “If only my English class taught things by/about _____, then I’d really be on board?” This course gives students with a deep interest in literature the opportunity to explore an individualized pursuit, design their own reading list, encounter advanced literary texts and practices, and write a college-level essay of twenty-plus pages or an equivalent creative composition. Coursework will include developing a question for exploration, constructing a reading plan of literary merit, and receiving instruction in literary analytical modes, in addition to the course’s primary focus on multi-draft writing and editing. The choice of topic will be up to the student in consultation with the instructor. Final compositions will be submitted to a literary journal or magazine for high school students.
Offered spring semester
*Pre/Corequisite: AP English Language and Composition OR
Rhetoric and the Modern World + permission of the department

Nature and Experience: Grade 12

Nature and Experience*
Grade 12
.5 credit
What is our place in the natural world? How do literary depictions of wildness, wilderness, and the pastoral reflect or evoke religious dispositions such as gratitude, joy, reverence, and awe? How do environmental writers use religious texts and traditions? To engage such questions, this interdisciplinary course explores selected texts in creative nonfiction that examine the relationship between “Nature” and human flourishing. Representative figures include Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, Annie Dillard, Wendell Berry, Terry Tempest Williams, Barry Lopez, Gary Snyder, Doug Peacock, Lauret Savoy, and Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Offered spring semester
*Prerequisite: Religion and Ethics
*Successful completion of the course also garners Religion credit