English Core Curriculum

In English I, students explore the theme of identity and seek to answer the essential question, “To what extent is identity fixed or influenced?” This focus provides a platform for students to develop skills as critical thinkers, readers, and writers with various texts, including short stories, poetry, novels, essays, graphic novels, and plays. Throughout the course, written assignments cover summary-and-response, personal narrative, reflection, literary analysis, and research. Students will also have opportunities to complete creative projects and make artistic connections.

In this course, students, in the fall semester, engage in an extensive study of the short story form, helping them to acquire a critical vocabulary and learn specifically about the literary elements of plot, character, setting, theme, style, tone, and point of view. The writing component focuses on literary analysis, with an emphasis on organization, structure, and thesis statement development. Regular vocabulary study is required. In the second semester, students study multiple or longer works by major authors as well as literary criticism. The writing component focuses on research, with students preparing a major documented research essay on a literary topic. Regular vocabulary study is once again required.

This course invites students to engage in what is perhaps the most necessary skill to have in today’s increasingly complex and unpredictable world: articulating a strong and well-informed argument. Students are provided ample opportunities to read, discuss, and evaluate arguments from the world around them. Viewing writing as a conversational act, students form their own arguments in response to arguments they encounter in print, other media, or in person. The primary texts introduce conversations centered around ongoing social issues and offer useful templates for such academic writing “moves” as agreeing and disagreeing, introducing and using quotations, introducing ongoing debates, and answering objections. These materials are supplemented with literary art, and an ongoing emphasis is placed on the development of analytical and interpretative skills. Students leave the course equipped to articulate their positions in various forums, from casual conversation to the formal academic research essay, and with a deeper understanding of why formulating and taking positions matters.

This course option for the second semester of English III invites students to utilize the writing skills they have garnered to-date to write about a variety of artistic genres, including but not limited to visual arts, classical music, popular music, dance, theater, film, and creative writing. Students identify the essential elements necessary for writing about each particular artistic genre through playing the role of the observer, the interviewer, the researcher, and the audience member. While students experience some canonical works as subjects, current Interlochen performances and exhibits form the bulk of subject material. As students begin to consider their place in the world, they transition from writing broadly about art to writing about their own identities as artists, garnering skills in technical writing to market themselves in their post-secondary lives. 

Is it possible for Black artists to achieve artistic freedom when the predominantly White cultural establishment persistently produces and promotes works that misrepresent Black people? Do Black artists have a duty to counteract negative propaganda with their own propaganda? These are questions that Black intellectuals and artists grappled with during the period we now call the Harlem Renaissance, producing one of the largest and most influential bodies of Black literature and art in the history of the United States. In this course, students will study the works of Black philosophers, novelists, artists, musicians, and dancers who championed the achievement of civil rights for African Americans through their work during the Harlem Renaissance. Students will survey the works of WEB Du Boise, Alain Locke, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Aaron Douglas, Laura Wheeler Waring, William Grant Still, Florence Price, Duke Ellington, Katherine Dunham, and Josephine Baker, to name a few.

This course option for the second semester of English III explores the liberating power of art for protest as well as self-expression, which in itself can be a form of protest. Students read novels (including a novel in verse), short stories, essays, and poetry. The readings are paired with examples of visual and performing arts such as music. Students are also invited to make their own artistic connections. Throughout the course, written assignments cover literary analysis, reflection, research, and creative writing. The end of the semester is reserved for drafting a college application essay.

This course may be taken for social science credit or senior English credit. In this course, students explore current events – local, national, and international – that impact their lives and examine the ways in which media cover those events. While studying current events and media, students also learn about foundational journalistic practices, and transform our classroom into a functioning newsroom tasked with producing Interlochen Arts Academy’s newspaper, The Interlochen Times. All students will assume roles as Times staffers, and some will take on leadership roles for the publication.
 

In this course, students will investigate texts which respond, adapt, comment upon, or reimagine established works from the literary canon. Students will familiarize themselves with the notion of counter-story telling, the manner by which a writer can use the scaffolding of a previously known story and reimagine a story with a new focus. Particular attention will be paid to the ways in which literary works can challenge dominant historical discourses and reframe questions of authority. Through comparative analysis, students will consider how these reimaginings produce narrative tension, expose gaps or silences in the source material, and assert alternative epistemologies that foreground historically excluded voices.

Considering Shakespeare’s plays as both enduring classics of literature and living theatrical experiences, students become acquainted with the vitality, versatility, and universality of the language. Each day, students watch recorded live London productions of Shakespeare's plays in community, an experience that introduces moments of questioning, observing and interpreting. Several short articles are assigned as independent reading, to which students respond in brief essays that are often completed during class, using the sources as a lens through which to view and understand how Shakespeare’s plays are relevant to us in 2024.

This course invites students to explore the concepts present in many of the great works throughout history—concepts such as courage, virtue, love, or justice—and examine how they manifest differently in literature across time. Students engage with various genres of literature, including music, film, fiction, poetry, drama, and creative nonfiction, ultimately selecting one classic text from the Western literary canon and a contemporary counterpart to utilize for their main focus. Students learn how to approach and read complex texts and compare/contrast how these great ideas are presented in their canonical and contemporary selections. Ultimately, students become more critical thinkers, readers, and writers through their exploration, deepening their understanding of the great conversation taking place across literature and how the great ideas are at work in their own lives.

Students in this course explore the many cultures of the Middle East through traditions of powerful storytelling in works of fiction and nonfiction, ancient and contemporary poems, and films.  Each text introduces readers to the history and geography of this region and the political, religious, ethnic, and socioeconomic factors that fuel long-standing conflicts. Readers form new understanding of particular cultures in regional historical contexts, then choose from creative writing continuation, personal narrative response to reading various perspectives, and literary/historical analyses in order to synthesize their knowledge about the Middle East as they acquire research and communication skills.

Civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance are hallmarks of the American Civil Rights Movement. In juxtaposition, The Black Power Movement emphasized self-defense, self-determinism, and perhaps a more Machiavellian approach to liberation. The actions and beliefs of these separate activists defined the march towards liberation from the 1950’s—1970’s. However, the revolution for Black liberation was not only fought with marches and picket signs; it was also fought through the written word, the paintbrush, and the stage. In this course, students will study the works of Black writers, philosophers, and other artists who used their artwork as a political device during the Black Arts Movement (1965-1975). In particular, students will delve into the respective works of James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni, Ntozaki Shange, Amiri Baraka, and many others.

A theatrical play is a unique form of literature that has as much to do with music as it does with words. Using dialogue as the primary driver of story and character, this class will introduce students to various dramatic techniques that will help them analyze plays -- and write short plays of their own -- that engage the audience and lead to a satisfying theatrical experience. Students will be encouraged to take full advantage of their own unique worlds to give their work authenticity. Weekly playwriting exercises will be supported by reading and analyzing a new play every week. These will be a mix of historical, modern, and contemporary plays and will tie in thematically to the exercises. Students will take turns breaking down different aspects of the play, be it plot, subtext, punctuation, or a playwright’s history, to more extrinsic aspects of the theatre such as conceptualizing costumes, imagining the play in a site-specific setting, or designing a poster for a new production. In addition, students will be responsible for writing one theatre review of a play (possibly an Interlochen production), as well as writing a final research paper that will be tailored to their chosen field of interest relating to theatre.

Though it is true that Science Fiction is an art form that lends itself to escapism, it can also be said that many writers use the speculative and the fantastic to examine the tangible world more thoroughly. In this course, students will learn to identify the ways in which speculative elements can be used as a metaphor for contemporary social issues. Students will also explore the Science Fiction genre as an art form and a tool for liberation.

This course introduces students to poetry as both an art form and a cultural force. Through close reading and discussion, students will explore how poets use language—through imagery, sound, and structure—to create meaning and emotional impact. By examining works from classic poets like Emily Dickinson to contemporary voices including hip hop artists, students will gain insight into poetry’s evolving role in society and its connections to other creative forms. The course encourages students not only to deepen their appreciation of poetry but also to engage with it as a source of inspiration for their own creative expression.

This course provides students instruction and practice in the reading, writing, and critical thinking skills required in college. Emphasis is on written assignments that require synthesis, analysis, and argument based on sources. Students who complete this course may select to earn both high school and college credit, transcripted by Indiana University and transferrable to many colleges and universities. 

This course helps students develop critical skills essential to participation in the interpretive process. Through class discussion and focused writing assignments, this course introduces the premises and motives of literary analysis and critical methods associated with historical, generic, and/or cultural concerns. Students who complete this course may select to earn both high school and college credit, transcripted by Indiana University and transferrable to many colleges and universities.