High School Humanities Curriculum: Thematic High School English Curriculum That Challenges All Students Grades 8-12

<BODY> <P><FONT SIZE=4 COLOR=#000000><font face=papyrus>Outstanding First-Year Template for a Four-Year Humanities & Literature Curriculum Sequence, Grades 9-12:</FONT></U></P> <P><B><FONT SIZE=4 COLOR=#000000><font face=papyrus>"Monomythic Patterns in Literature"</FONT></U></B></P> <P><FONT SIZE=4 COLOR=#000000><font face=papyrus><B>Impact for Students:</B> </FONT><FONT SIZE=3 COLOR=#000000><font face=papyrus> Junior high school humanities curriculum: Students become anthropologists as they explore the many faces of the monomyth: the source of all human storytelling. Thought provoking essential questions guide students to make connections between ancient myth and modern fiction, and understand the ways that each adheres to the time tested formula of Loss, Journey, Test and Reconciliation. Students discover the consistent mythic patterns that underlie all stories, regardless of country of origin or date of composition. Emphasis on high level analytical thinking and on the comparative mode. </FONT></U></P> <P><FONT SIZE=4 COLOR=#000000><font face=papyrus><B>Impact for Teachers:</B></FONT><FONT SIZE=3 COLOR=#000000><font face=papyrus>  Junior high school humanities curriculum: Organized around universally applicable essential questions and themes, this course develops critical reading & thinking. Students are enlisted in the adventure of identifying and then linking the underlying patterns & meanings shared by all literary works. The works selected for this course present a cumulative, consistent and suitably varied re-working of just a few core ideas: the loss, journey and testing of the protagonist (hero), and the ubiquitous human yearning for a past perfection, situation or bliss that must necessarily recede as one moves forward in time. </FONT></U></P> <P><FONT SIZE=3 COLOR=#000000><font face=papyrus><B>Each CD contains: </B></FONT><FONT SIZE=3 COLOR=#000000><font face=papyrus>  Clearly written teacher guides for six seminal myths, nine short stories, two novels and a variety of poems and prose selections that lay the foundations for high performance analytical and comparative reading and interpretation. From this well established, first-year base, students and teachers may confidently journey forward in subsequent years to confront, and to create meaningful encounters with--and connections between-- the entire canon of American, British and World Literature. The in-depth commentaries provided for this intitial selection of works provide key linkages from text to text; key questions for reading and discussion, and establish meaningful connections to larger works of the canon that may be attempted by students and teacher as they build upon these sound interpretive premises. Texts of myths and poetry are provided; short story & one-act play selections are either already present in your high school resource collection, or downloadable from the internet if within the public domain. </P> <P><FONT SIZE=5 COLOR=#000000><font face=papyrus><U>Excerpts from the introduction to this course: </FONT></B></P></TD></TR> </TBODY> </TABLE> </DIV> <DIV ALIGN="left"><TABLE WIDTH=59% BORDER=0 CELLPADDING=0 CELLSPACING=0><TBODY> <TR VALIGN="top"> <TD> <P><UL><FONT SIZE=2 COLOR=#000000><font face=arial> <P>Dear Teacher, <P>Thank you for purchasing Topschools Humanities curriculum. This package and its sequenced readings are the product of thirty years’ experience teaching an articulated and aligned curriculum in high performance public schools. Its contents have been tested with over 5000 students, each of whom has come to delight in coursework that is rooted in essential concepts to which they return again and again as they journey forward to acquire new skills and apply new learning.</P> <P>This is a truly articulated curriculum. Each learning activity builds upon the one that preceded it, and prepares the way for the next that is to come. </P> <P>The familiar neighborhood of inquiry established by this approach answers two challenging questions that can often trouble students. The first is: “why are we doing this?” The second is: “what does this have to do with me, and/or with our class activities”? </P> <P>A thematic curriculum that centers upon universally important human and cultural questions—rather than one organized by chronology or by nationality of author—is best positioned to answer questions like these. </P> <P>What is more interesting to each of our students than the narrative of his/her own personal history and challenges? Junior high school students are invited to make important discoveries in this junior high school humanities curriculum: Individual lives share fundamental similarities: each person begins as an infant, and as adolescence approaches, temporarily separates from parents (as did Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz) to explore the world and find his/her own true path. No one is exempt: each of us journeys from childhood to adulthood, and each of us experiences the trade-offs, the advantages and the nostalgic regrets, that such a transition invokes. This is called ontogeny.</P> <P>But the ontogenetic journey is a microcosm of a much larger, historical transformation: As a species, we all share the mixed blessings of the neolithic revolution effected some fifteen thousand years ago. This was the time when our nomadic, wild-game following ancestors discovered agriculture and learned the secrets of animal domestication. No more following herds: now it was more profitable to plant a food crop and stay in one place. As a result, our forebears were forced into a steep learning curve of technological and social advancement: they invented architecture for dwellings and food storage, they invented cuneiform writing as a means of recording trade transactions, and they created all the familiar structures of the modern world: cities, armies and written laws to protect property and manage relations between larger groups of human beings who, having given up the hunt, now lived in one permanent location at close proximity--but who were no longer related to each other as in the old tribal or kinship days. </P> <P>New York, Cairo, Sao Paolo, Beijing, traffic congestion, multi-nationals, war: these are all products of--and footnotes to--what anthropologists call phylogeny.</P> <P>These journeys--both ontogenetic and phylogenetic--concern human beings immediately and directly. They are central to our questioning of ourselves, our roles, and our relationship to the larger world that, intact, insistent and powerfully established, receives us at our birth.</P> <P>Themes like these concern youth and elderly alike. They focus our attention, speak to our personal experience, and when they are incorporated into the classroom, themes like these release us from an all too common, prophylactic, thought stifling instructional format: the dryness of literary anthologies that group works and ideas into national, curatorial or culture specific compartments that are walled-off from universal concerns.</P> <P>Secondary students are not interested in specialized literary debates; are not interested in tracing the origins of this or that poem to some local, social or political concern of the eighteenth century. </P> <P>The students that we teach need big pictures, not narrowly focused graduate school specificity that serves professorial or thesis writer dead-ends. They need an introduction to universal ideas; they need to learn to read patterns between works that span cultures and epochs; and they need opportunities to discover the personal significance of the questions that humans have always been concerned with. </P> <P>Our goal at the secondary level should be to equip students to engage in meaningful and personally relevant activities:</P> <P>•Thoughtful reflection about history and progress <P>•Thoughtful reflection about the trade-offs between personal desires and social obligations <P>•The ability to read carefully and to make intelligent, evidentiary connections between apparently diverse narratives <P>•And the ability to confidently answer big picture questions such as: “how does literature present us with an image of the forces and events that shape our lives? And how does it achieve it respective ends?" <P>The simple answer to this latter question is: literature is the medium through which thoughtful writers attempt to interpret and attain some measure of understanding--and hopefully, control--over our ontogenetic and phylogenetic histories. </P> <P>Before written language, these efforts were the impetus behind the sympathetic magic of the cave paintings such as we see at Altamira. After written language, these same efforts were undertaken by a new class of artists: writers, who gave us the Epic of Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Hamlet and The Scarlet Letter, to name a few.</P> <P>In this thematic curriculum, questions such as "what is literature concerned with" can be continuously applied to any work that might be read; and students find themselves at the center as they mull the similarities and differences between works that explore the same big ideas.</P> <P>The center of this literature course is about extracting meaning; about interpretation; about using the comparative mode to read carefully; and about coming to understand the ways that all stories converge around—and reinterpret—universal themes.</P> <P>An approach like this is what makes the journey through this course both meaningful and purposive for students. </P> <P><U><FONT SIZE=3 COLOR=#000000><font face=papyrus> What is Contained In This Program & Its Duration</U></font></P> <P><FONT SIZE=2 COLOR=#000000><font face=arial>I have assembled nineteen texts and commentaries for you to use in a sequence, although you may supplement with your own favorite material all along the way. But the sequence presented here is important and should be adhered to. This is because work #1 prepares the way for work #2 and so on. This is what curricular articulation insists upon.</P> <P>The short texts I have selected are of high interest. I have used each successfully with students ranging from grades 7 to grade 12. The texts are simple, but they can be daunting in terms of the interpretive challenges they impose. This is not a course on "Red Badge of Courage" or "The Great Gatsby." Instead, it is a course that uses carefully selected short pieces that enables student to establish an interpretive framework that they can successfully use to read these and other important literary works.</P> <P>The curriculum is designed to challenge all levels of students—easy enough to tie into for the less literarily inclined, and rich and deep enough to fully engage curriculum weary juniors and seniors who already have their sights set on enrolling in a high quality university. </P> <P>This material is especially suitable for AP classes—including the simple story “Sylvester and the Magic Pebble,” which is an illustrated children’s book running to around twenty or thirty pages of drawings. </P> <P>Put within the context of the thematic architecture of the course, this story is highly challenging. If this “simple” work is approached in the true spirit of the course design, it will work every time. What’s more, it will provide important information that students need as they advance to the next work.</P> <P>Hence, I request that you not determine on your own that this or that work is suitable or not suitable in terms of level of difficulty. Further, do not be deterred by student complaints that “I have read this before.” Having read a story before is immaterial as far as this course is concerned. It’s not the reading of a myth, short story or one-act play per se that is important; rather, it is what we do with each of these that creates the challenge.</P> <P>In some ways this curriculum can be said to resemble a game of chess. In a chess match, the rules are understood by both players, and the roles of the pieces are clearly defined…and yet each game played (or story written) turns out to be a unique and surprising variation upon those structural commonalities. The variability and unpredictability of chess—worked out within the same, consistent set of rules and procedures—is immensely engaging. </P> <P>Why shouldn't and adventure of reading and thinking about literature be as engaging for students as this figurative chess match?</P> <P>Each of the texts in this course provides new and surprising variations upon the core themes that have been essential to story telling ever since Gilgamesh. A brief list of these themes would include:</P> <P>•The Reconciliation of Individual and Societal Goals and Values <P>•The Impact of Technology and Economies of Scale <P>•The Wish for Renewal: Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Western <P>•The Heroic Quest <P>•The Romantic Revolt Against Progress <P>•Citizenship and the Modern World <P>This program fuses together a two-year humanities curriculum. My advice is to pursue this program for a full year at minimum. For teachers who are adept at creating discussions, and who can augment our first-year selections with their own personalized material, this initial course can easily move to two full and challenging years of work for students—or more.</P> <P>The website states that this program can become the “template” for all future courses in the literature area in your school. I have done this myself, so it is no empty claim. At Bellevue International School I started this program with 7th graders and carried it all the way forward to 12th grade—a total of six years.</P> <P>How did I get six years out of nineteen texts, you might ask. </P> <P>I didn’t. The nineteen texts arranged here would be utilized in the first year (again, regardless of the grade level at which one starts), but the concepts and questions introduced here become the organizing principle for all future literature courses as students move forward. These nineteen short works provide the keys to the next “sixty” canonical works that might be attempted. As keys, these nineteen create an interpretive structure for all that you might choose to do hereafter—whether the teacher uses British, American or World literature anthologies.</P> <P>This program comes with a year-long e mail support opportunity for you. I encourage you to write me at any time to pose a question or to probe a meaning. The one year free email support and consultation commences with your first communication; not with the date of your purchase.</P> <P><FONT SIZE=3 COLOR=#000000><font face=papyrus>                 <U>Topschools Humanities Curriculum 1 & 2</P></U></font> <P><FONT SIZE=3 COLOR=#000000><font face=papyrus><U>Thematic/Literary Goals:</P></U></FONT> <P><FONT SIZE=2 COLOR=#000000><font face=arial>To help students acquire a framework for the reading and thinking about literature; </P> <P>•To enable students to identify structural elements (plot, theme, setting) and language use: symbolism, irony, connotation, denotation et al. </P> <P>•To enable students to see that fundamental story patterns and themes span and link together cultures and epochs; </P> <P>•To enable students to appreciate the metaphor behind all story-telling;</P> <P><FONT SIZE=3 COLOR=#000000><font face=papyrus><U>Reading Assessment Targets</FONT></U> <P><FONT SIZE=2 COLOR=#000000><font face=arial>•State both literal or inferred main ideas and provide text based support <P>• Use graphic organizers to analyze and compare themes and main ideas in two or more texts <P>• Develop questions before, during, and after reading <P>• Compare/contrast recurring themes; similarities and differences <P>• Examine how an action leads to long-lasting effects <P>• Judge the effectiveness of the author’s use of literary devices and language <P>• Draw conclusions about style, tone, mood based upon language choice <P>• Identify the persuasive effects of vocabulary <P>• Compare the development of an idea or concept in two or more texts <P><FONT SIZE=3 COLOR=#000000><font face=papyrus><U>Writing Assessment Targets</P></U></font> <P><FONT SIZE=2 COLOR=#000000><font face=arial>• Special emphasis on short (3-8 sentence) one paragraph in-class timed responses to specific prompts <P> •Formulate a precise topic that responds to the prompt and that takes a position that will be the controlling idea of the paragraph <P> •Provide supporting evidence from text by weaving exact quotes into expository sentences within the paragraph <P> •Use standard devices or paragraph hooks for making transitions between two or more paragraphs <P> vSee Topschools Writing Curriculum for specific instruction on voice, fluency, word choice, sentence construction, phrase and clause variation, and creative deployment of parts of speech within sentences.</P> <P><FONT SIZE=3 COLOR=#000000><font face=papyrus>High Performance Humanities Curriculum <P>These richly engaging high school Humanities courses are the starting point for outstanding teachers and English departments: an articulated, highly engaging Humanities and literature curriculum that can be taught to all students, grades 7-12. <P>New teachers in high school can benefit from experience as they teach challenging english and humanities courses to their students. Teaching high powered humanities classes for student achievement is within the capability of every teacher--provided they have the guidance provided by an articulated, essential high school humanities curriculum. Student achievement in high school english requires challenging high school english coursework in reading, thinking and writing. Challenging high school humanities curriculum--and challenging high school english and literature courses--should be predicated upon essential questions and the comparative, analytical mode. In this outstanding high school english curriculum, the course sequence is extended for two years, thus creating a continuum of learning experiences for the high school student in english or humanities class. </P> <P>"...Orpheus comes very close to achieving his goal." In this lesson, the high school english teacher links essential questions, myths and philosophy as part of the humanities approach to high school coursework and academic high school curriculum. Outstanding high school english classes provoke thought and analysis--and they must utilize essential questions as they do so. Teaching literature in high school: new works in a challenging high school english class may be introduced, but they must be referenced to a set of essential questions and themes that enables high school students to make connections between works of literature, and to begin to describe for the high school english teacher the degree to which the works participate in--and diverge from--the essential questions that are carried forward in the high performance english class--as well as in the high performance humanities class. But he must fail for the very same reason that Isis cannot immortalize the son of the King of Syria, and for the very same reason that Osiris must fit--and must want to fit, ultimately--into Set's coffin."</P> <P></P> <P>This engaging year long course--a year long high school english and humanities curriculum-- lays the foundation for a significant interpretive journey--either as a stand-alone for the most advanced students nearing graduation, or as the first level of an articulated three year program, commencing as early as 7th grade. Teaching literature in the high school: an outstanding humanities curriculum links learning experiences together for student achievement. Teachers of English and Humanities are able to create seamless, quality learning experiences in their high school English and high school Humanities classes. This two year Humanities course sets the stage for teachers who would make the English or Humanities class the most exciting class in the high school. High engagement learning activities for high school students in the English classroom: linking together essential questions, myths and anthropology, high school english teachers help students see new power and meaning in literature as a high school subject. </P> <P>Course content and activities appeal to and challenge all secondary students--including seniors--regardless of entry level abilities or initial exit goals. High school english teachers gain the upper hand as their students become anthropologists who examine the origins of civilization and its central metaphor: the monomyth. </P> <P>Level For high school humanities teachers, Level 1 CD contains: teacher thematic and content guides; four myths; five short stories; interpretive questions, story mapping activities and commentaries that guide student reading, writing and class discussion. </P> <P>New teachers in high school can benefit from experience as they teach challenging english and humanities courses to their students. Teaching high school English: teaching high powered humanities classes for student achievement is within the capability of every teacher--provided they have the guidance provided by an articulated, essential high school humanities curriculum. Student achievement in high school english requires challenging high school english coursework in reading, thinking and writing. Challenging high school humanities coursers--and challenging high school english and literature courses--should be predicated upon essential questions and the comparative, analytical mode. In this outstanding high school english curriculum, the course sequence is extended for two years, thus creating a continuum of learning experiences for the high school student in english or humanities class. </P> <P>"...Orpheus comes very close to achieving his goal." In this lesson, the high school english teacher links essential questions, myths and philosophy as part of the humanities approach to high school coursework and academic high school curriculum. Outstanding high school english classes provoke thought and analysis--and they must utilize essential questions as they do so. New works in a challenging high school english class may be introduced, but they must be referenced to a set of essential questions and themes that enables high school students to make connections between works of literature, and to begin to describe for the high school english teacher the degree to which the works participate in--and diverge from--the essential questions that are carried forward in the high performance english class--as well as in the high performance humanities class. But he must fail for the very same reason that Isis cannot immortalize the son of the King of Syria, and for the very same reason that Osiris must fit--and must want to fit, ultimately--into Set's coffin."</P> <P></P> <P>This engaging year long course--a thematic high school english course-- lays the foundation for a significant interpretive journey--either as a stand-alone for the most advanced students nearing graduation, or as the first level of an articulated three year program, commencing as early as 7th grade. An outstanding humanities curriculum links learning experiences together for student achievement. Teachers of English and Humanities are able to create seamless, quality learning experiences in their high school English and high school Humanities classes. This two year Humanities course sets the stage for teachers who would make the English or Humanities class the most exciting class in the high school. High engagement learning activities for high school students in the English classroom: linking together essential questions, myths and anthropology, high school english teachers help students see new power and meaning in literature as a high school subject. </P> <P>Course content and activities appeal to and challenge all secondary students--including seniors--regardless of entry level abilities or initial exit goals. High school english teachers gain the upper hand as their students become anthropologists who examine the origins of civilization and its central metaphor: the monomyth. </P> <P>This year-long, highly engaging Level 2 curriculum is built upon Level 1, and carries essential questions and reading/thinking skill practices to the highest levels.</P> <P><FONT SIZE=3 COLOR=#000000><font face=arial>The depth and accessibility of this curriculum is such that it can be used to challenge 8th graders, or to challenge seniors who are going on to Ivy League schools (both of which I have done in my 6,000 student career). I encourage teachers who try this to sit in the back of the classroom and "get out of the way" as guided class discussions develop!</P> <P><FONT SIZE=3 COLOR=#000000><font face=arial>Level 2 is an exciting and beautiful culmination of Level 1-- curricular articulation at its finest. I recommend that both these courses be preceded by my high performance, <A HREF="PowerWriting.htm" TARGET="_top"><FONT SIZE=3 COLOR=#0000FF> semester long writing curriculum.</A><FONT SIZE=3 COLOR=#000000><font face=arial></P> <P><FONT SIZE=3 COLOR=#000000><font face=arial>Test score results for students who have benefited from this combined package are available<A HREF="TestScores.htm" TARGET="_top"><FONT SIZE=3 COLOR=#0000FF> here.</A></P> </FONT></STRONG></A></P> </P> <P><A HREF="InternationalModel.htm" TARGET="_top"><font face=papyrus><FONT SIZE=3><B>Teachers Design High Powered Schools: Bellevue International School 1991, Lake Washington International School 1997, Marysville Arts & Technology 2003</U></FONT></B></A> <P><A HREF="Writing.htm" TARGET="_top"><font face=papyrus><FONT SIZE=3><B>Mastery Learning Writing Curriculum for Student Achievement </U></FONT></B></A></U> <P><A HREF="StartUpFAQ.htm" TARGET="_top"><font face=papyrus><FONT SIZE=3><B>SLC Myths: Making it Better vs. Making it New</STRONG></B></A> </U> <P><A HREF="Retention.htm" TARGET="_top"><font face=papyrus><FONT SIZE=3><B>Social Promotion...or Program Accountability?</U></FONT></B></A> <P><A HREF="Home.htm" TARGET="_top"><font face=papyrus><FONT SIZE=3><B>Transform the Instructional Culture</FONT></STRONG></B></A> <P><A HREF="Articulated.htm" TARGET="_top"><font face=papyrus><FONT SIZE=3><B>Thematic 9-12 Humanities & Literature Curriculum</U></FONT></STRONG></B></A> <P><A HREF="TestScores.htm" TARGET="_top"><font face=papyrus><FONT SIZE=3><B>Test Scores</I></U></FONT></STRONG></B></A> <P><A HREF="Academics.htm" TARGET="_top"><font face=papyrus><FONT SIZE=3><B>Essential Curriculum</FONT></B></A> </U> <P><A HREF="AdvancedPlacement.htm" TARGET="_top"><font face=papyrus><FONT SIZE=3><B>Articulated Curriculum</FONT></STRONG></B></A> </U></FONT> <P><A HREF="Products.htm" TARGET="_top"><font face=papyrus><FONT SIZE=3><B>Improving Instructional Effectiveness</FONT></B></A> <P><FONT SIZE=2><A HREF="BruceSaariCV.htm" TARGET="_top">Saari CV</A> </FONT></B></P> <P><FONT SIZE=2 COLOR=#000000>E mail address: saari@topschools.com</FONT></A></P> </BODY>