English

Dr. Ann Marshall joined the Renaissance faculty in 2009, following 25 years teaching at The Hill School in Pennsylvania. You can read her detailed bio in the “Faculty” page on this website. Consistent with the Renaissance interdisciplinary curriculum, course syllabi for English and History are integrated, with students exploring readings that tie in with their study of historical periods. Doc Marshall provides us with detailed course descriptions for grades nine through twelve as follows:

9th-Grade English is an introduction to literature and literary analysis. Students learn to recognize genres and conventions. They read and imitate works with distinctive narrative voices. Writing assignments range from composing an allegory to preparing close-reading paragraphs. In reading a Shakespearean play, they prepare line readings and explain how a director could approach a specific moment in a scene. Literary analysis may be brief, sometimes just a paragraph, to encourage students to discover telling diction. As readers, they gain confidence in identifying significant passages; as writers, they learn to recognize nuances in language. The class includes some formal grammar study and vocabulary derived from the texts we study. Typical texts include a Shakespearean play currently produced by the American Shakespeare Company in Staunton; Animal Farm; The Odyssey; poetry about the classical age from Tennyson to Brodsky; short stories by modern masters; To Kill a Mockingbird.

10th-Grade English is a study of world literature with a central theme: ideas of the self. Because of the overarching theme, the class requires a level of abstraction. The four major ideas of the self are summed up as tribal, typological, romantic, and modern or post-modern. Writing assignments range from three-paragraph essays on such themes as the Christian missionary goals of the Beowulf narrator to five-paragraph essays on topics inspired by contemporary essayists. Students review parts of speech and parts of the sentence in Grammar Smart and begin work on an S.A.T. common-errors approach to grammar. Typical texts include the Shakespearean play currently in production in Staunton; Things Fall Apart; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Siddhartha; Persepolis.

11th-Grade English is American literature or “The Emerging American Voice.” Students read about the Puritans and sample the writing of Winthrop and Edwards. Franklin is our representative rationalist. By the time students arrive at the transcendentalists, they are invested in recognizing American versions of romanticism and the novel. We are fortunate that American writer Wendell Berry will visit Charlottesville in 2009. His work, especially The Hidden Wound, provides a useful jumping off point for study of Melville’s Benito Cereno and Twain’s Huck Finn. S.A.T. preparation includes vocabulary study and a focus on common sentence errors. In addition to texts already mentioned, the 11th-graders read The Scarlet Letter, The Awakening, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Sula.

12th-Grade English focuses on narrative technique (the writer laid bare). It is also an advanced course in composition featuring short critical essays including a sophisticated character study with attention to the narrator’s voice. Students show they can skillfully avoid plot summary, introduce quotations with strong claims and context, and follow up with thoughtful commentary on the language of character or narrator. After classic British novels, the class moves to comedy and satire. Poetry study includes Shakespeare’s procreation sonnets, the carpe diem tradition, and Donne’s sacred verse. In spring, romantic, modern, and contemporary poets share the limelight as students learn to explicate and imitate poets of their choice. Typical texts include: Pride and Prejudice, Brideshead Revisited, The Importance of Being Earnest, Dubliners, Hamlet, and Cal.