Essential Questions and Core Reading by Grade Level
Ninth Grade: The works that students study during the ninth-grade year come from a variety of cultures and societies and from a wide range of time periods, but the worlds in which they take place nevertheless have much in common. The course focuses on the hero's journey, the classic monomyth articulated by Joseph Campbell in Hero With a Thousand Faces. Students explore how the hero, called to a journey of adventure and danger, acquires self-knowledge and faces encounters with mortality. These themes invite students to consider their own journeys through life as they begin the adventure of high school.
Representative texts: The Odyssey; A Midsummer Night's Dream; Of Mice and Men; The Catcher in the Rye; Another Brooklyn; Greek and Assyrian mythology; short stories and poetry.
Tenth Grade: The literature for this course builds on the ninth-grade study of the hero's journey by exploring what happens when the hero has to operate as part of a group. What happens when the values of the individual clash with those of the larger society? What happens when the codes and laws of a society clash with one another? How do these conflicts play out in the debate over the nature of law and in the struggle to achieve justice? In short, why do individuals choose what they choose, and what are the consequences of those decisions?
Representative texts: Antigone; Macbeth; Black Boy; To Kill a Mockingbird; A Separate Peace; Lord of the Flies; Montana, 1948; The Laramie Project; short stories and poetry.
Eleventh Grade: What does it mean to be an American? How has this definition changed over the centuries? How does the story of the American Dream both liberate and constrain? Who has access to that Dream?
Representative texts: The Scarlet Letter; excerpts from the Transcendentalists; The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; Into the Wild; The Great Gatsby; Passing; Death of a Salesman; The Crucible; Beloved; poetry and essays by American authors.
Twelfth Grade: How have forms of communication changed over time? How have these changes shaped and reshaped the form and content of literature and the arts in general? In short, how do media and meaning interact, intertwine, and even interfere with each other?
Representative texts: Oedipus; Hamlet; Doubt; The Metamorphosis; Interior: Chinatown; Atonement; personal essays; world poetry.
Summary: These questions attempt to address the timeless admonition above the entrance to the temple at Delphi—“Know Thyself”—by exploring the tension between our desire to be part of groups that meet our basic social needs and our recognition that no two people are exactly alike, that each of us is an individual with unique talents, interests, and values. As students work to define their unique identities, and to be members of groups, they journey toward adulthood.
