Home

Advanced Writing & Research

Classical World Lit

Creative Writing

American Lit

Noodle Tools

School Library

SOPs 2006-2007

Startup Doc for Everyone

vhagel@ohsd.net

Advanced Writing and Research:
Or...Everything you always wanted to know about writing a college research paper but were afraid to ask. This course prepares students for that Anthropology 101 course where, on the third day of class next September, your instructor says, "You have a twelve-page paper on any topic in Anthrpology due on November 5th. I expect no grammatical, syntactical, or mechanical errors. Class dismissed. "Holy Cow, Batman! No errors? Syntactical errors? Help!" Not to worry. This is the course where you learn to write a fully documented research paper. During the weekend before that Anthrpology 101 paper is due, you'll be playing video games and eating bon-bons while your fellow freshmen are still drafting their papers and perspiring profusely, wondering how to explain to Dad...

Classical World Literature I and II
These two semester courses would be better labeled College Prep English I and II.  Classical I students will read Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Grendel, The Inferno, and King Lear.Classical II students will five of the following:  The Prince, Richard III, Heart of Darkness, Frankenstein, Oedipus Rex, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Metamorphosis.  Course activities include seminar discussions, a wide range of Internet searches, a test for each work as well as an essay in which students examine major ideas of the texts.

Creative Writing:
Everyone has stories.  We hear them in the line at the grocery store, at the table beside us at Starbuck's, in the booth behind us at the restaurant.  This course provides students with opportunities for gaining control over those persistent stories that will not leave them alone, stories that must be told.  Students will leave the course with a collection of short stories, a pack of strategies for developing characters and setting, and a cache of figurative language that will raise one's writing to a level worthy of reading.

American Literature:
We Americans live in a continuing contradiction, believing that we are somehow unique individuals who at the same time are often unwilling to stand out in a crowd.  The literature of our culture provides clues to why and how we think the contradictory the ideas we espouse so willingly as our own, though many, if not most, of those ideas are not uniquely created in the vacuum of our small worlds.  By the end of the course, students will be able to identify where their ideas have originated and where they might be headed.