ENGLISH
The English program at Heschel is predicated on our core belief that students will live better, richer, and more meaningful lives if they do so in the company of great literature. People have always used storytelling to reflect upon and wrestle with experience. By putting our students in conversation with stories, as well as poems, plays, and essays - texts of all sorts, from the ancient to the modern - we help them to uncover the breadth of human experience and invite them to examine themselves and their world in ever new ways.
Classes are conducted as seminar-style discussions that encourage and reward close reading, teaching students that how they read is as important as what they read. In each year core classical texts are placed in conversation with contemporary works. Writing is as central to the curriculum as reading.
Assignments vary because written work not only reflects, but also shapes the thinking students do. Focused free-writing allows students to explore established ideas and discover their own. Short, frequent analytical paragraphs hone their skills of making an argument and supporting it with evidence from a text. In formal essays, students sculpt and shape their own ideas with the rigor and logical flow needed to engage an external audience. All English classes also incorporate a range of creative writing assignments that spring from the literature. For example, by imitating TIm O’Brien’s style, writing in the voice of Holden Caulfield, or filling a gap in Toni Morrison’s narrative with an original monologue, students develop their own voices and experience the thrill of creating original work. Each year, students also study grammar and vocabulary, strengthening their basic writing skills. Our aim in all classroom activities is to inspire a love of language, to develop the ability to think deeply about the complexities of human relationships and experience, and to foster passionate, sophisticated readers, writers and young adults.
Beyond the course offerings listed below, the English department offers a weekly Honors seminar in 10th and 11th grades to a limited group of students who wish to engage in additional study of highly challenging texts.