Welcome!

Welcome to English 1 and the beginning of your high school experience. We will be focusing in this class on helping you to become more adept and skillful readers and writers. In reading you will be introduced to a variety of classic and modern works of high literary merit. You will focus on developing your vocabulary and your ability to interpret and analyze literature. In writing, you will develop the ability to write a literary essay, sharpen your grammar skills and your understanding of how language and sentences work. You will become a skilled writer capable of expressing your thoughts concisely and creatively.

But beyond this, the goal of this class is help you begin to understand the role that literature plays in helping us to understand our lives, the truths we live by, and the nature of right and wrong in human society. In some ways, literature remains one of the best way people have invented to think about what it means to be a human being living in society. It addresses big ideas and deep questions, and this class has as one of its goals to help you begin to see how literature works to provide us with glimpses of truth that are often hidden from view or suppressed because they are difficult to face or make us uncomfortable.