The purpose of this Haas | English site is to provide access to assignments, handouts, and anything related to classroom activity. It is intended to be a reservoir of resources associated with classes I teach. Each section will be able to track assignments and remain current. The links to resources for use outside of the classroom will continue to grow over time. I hope you find this web site useful.
Contact Information
- Instructor: Haas
- Voicemail: 508.497.9820 ext. 1285
- Email: Fred Haas at Hopkinton High School
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One thing is essential to becoming a human being and that is learning to use the mind. A human being acts in a human way if he thinks. – Robert Hutchins
Rationale
Thinking and Feeling through Reading and Writing
Language is a foundation for learning and the primary medium through which an individual communicates with the world. Since all human beings think and feel, students are required to demonstrate this uniquely human capacity. By reading for understanding and writing to be understood students create cornerstones of their language foundation and all education.
Course Description
This English class is a study of language, literature, and composition. Our focus will be the magic of language. Language is magical when it helps you understand how to:
- Transcend the common, mundane, and petty
- Celebrate what we were, what we are, what we can be
- Grasp the complexity and beauty of our humanity
- Generate ideas
- See with different eyes
You will be required to engage in careful reading and critical analysis of literature. This includes probing works of recognized literary merit in an effort to develop critical standards for interpretation, exploring your own work and the work of your peers, all while attempting better to understand the complexities of what it means to be a human being living in a world with others.Writing is an integral part of this course, including writing about literature and writing your own literature. One of the goals of the course is to increase your ability to understand what you read and explain clearly, cogently, even elegantly, what you understand about literary works and why you interpret them the way you do. You will develop your own voice as a writer, through unique use of language and integrating your personality. You will also be encouraged to progress toward stylistic maturity including: use of wide-ranging vocabulary with denotative accuracy and a respect for connotation; variety in sentence structure, together with appropriate use of subordination and coordination, logical organization, enhanced by specific techniques of coherence such as repetition, transitions, and emphasis; rhetorical effectiveness, such as controlling tone, maintaining consistent voice, and achieving emphasis through parallelism and antithesis.
Each term you will do a considerable amount of writing – creative, academic, and personal. Writing is a mind traveling, destination unknown. Each term you will write a variety of academic and creative papers as part of a portfolio.
You are expected to become an independent learner that must shoulder considerable responsibility for the reading and writing you will do, including a considerable amount of work outside of class. This is meant to be an intense course designed to broaden your experience, by increasing your reading, writing, and thinking skills in preparation for your place as a free thinking individual in a democratic society.
