2016-17 English Class Review

This year in English has been a year that I won’t soon forget. The ability to choose what we make of certain projects, coupled with the atmosphere of discussion and learning how to articulate ideas on the spot, while also learning more about ourselves, has been a great experience for me, and surely for others as well.

What I loved about this class is that it dedicated time to reading, which many people, including myself, don’t have much time for outside of school. It gave me the opportunity to work on my reading speed, which is going to be essential for me next year, and in college. It also helped me learn to enjoy reading. Once I am finished with senior year, with all the concerts, shows and tests, I will finish the book, 1984, and I will likely move on to another Orwell novel, like Animal Farm or Keep the Aspidistra Flying. I think that reading several books at a time has pushed me to try to appreciate the books I choose. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the assigned reading, though, as I really got into the story in Oedipus/Antigone, and I especially enjoyed Laughter in the Dark. However, the experience overall made me see reading in a new light - not just as something I should do, but as something I can do. My experience this year will absolutely get me reading more in the future.

I enjoyed that, aside from reading, the writing/revising experiences made me feel like I was a real author. The way I got to choose my assignments, like the psychoanalysis paper, was really cool in that I got to write what I wanted to write about, not just what is assigned, something a professional author would do.

I do feel like I had control over what I learned from this class. I learned some interesting things from the psychoanalysis paper that I had actually been thinking about before entering the class. I also learned how to defend my point of view when the class disagrees with me (on who the tragic hero was in Antigone). One thing that really went well was the book review project on 1984, as I learned how to make text to world connections, and how to spot signs of a possible semi-totalitarian uprising.

Overall it was a great year, but I think it could have been enhanced by having reading days once a week all year, or if that is not possible, at least once every other week. It is nice, with such a packed school schedule, to be able to just take some of the day to read.