English

Academics

English Curriculum

In the Lower School, our goal is to ignite a passion for reading by building foundational and comprehension skills through a curriculum that includes one-on-one development, small group work, and whole-group experiences. In the Middle School, we teach reading as an active process that includes annotations, written responses, and class discussions. Writing is employed as a thinking tool as well as a means of self-expression, where students can continually revise their writing to improve their content, organization, word choice, sentence fluency, voice, and mechanics, The Upper School curriculum encourages students to deepen their understanding of and response to literature by discerning broad patterns across a text or texts, as well as microanalysis, where students explain how specific words and literary techniques support their arguments. Across all divisions, the curriculum guides students to appreciate literature as both a mirror, reflecting aspects of their own identity and experiences, and as a window, revealing the perspectives of people with diverse identities and life experiences.

“Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created and recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books.”

Rudine Sims Bishop, The Ohio State University. "Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors." Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom. Vo. 6, no. 3. Summer 1990.

Signature Trevor

From visiting authors discussing their texts and the art of writing, to Shakespeare companies bringing to life celebrated plays like Macbeth and Hamlet, to engaging curricular components like Sunny's Book Club for our elementary students and 8th-Grade Book Talk, Trevor students are immersed in a dynamic English program that celebrates centuries of literature and a deep love for reading and writing.

Trevor:

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Item 1

Has hosted award-winning and best-selling authors including Karina Yan Glaser (The Vanderbeekers), Sarah Weeks (Save Me a Seat), Samira Ahmed (Internment), Jerry Craft (New Kid), Ellen Oh (Finding Junie Kim), Jasmine Varga (Other Words for Home), Shannon Hale and LeUyen Pham (Best Friends series), Dave Eggers (Zeitoun and What Is the What), Jennifer Egan (Look at Me and A Visit from the Goon Squad), Chimamanda Adichie (Purple Hibiscus and Americanah), Jason Reynolds (All American Boys and Stamped), and Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis).
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Has their own student-run newspaper in each division.
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Facilitates a Writing Center in the Upper School, a space where students cultivate the craft of writing with mentorship by peers.

Department Mission Statement

The English Department faculty model and facilitate a passion for reading and writing. Trevor presents an intentionally diverse program that promotes intellectual curiosity and independence. With thoughtful guidance from teachers, students develop analytical reading skills and learn to express themselves both critically and passionately as writers as we prepare them for the world they are inheriting. The Lower School embraces a balanced literacy approach to give students a broad range of experiences; the Middle and Upper School builds upon this strong foundation to foster sophisticated thinking and insightful writing about texts from within and outside traditional literary canons. Throughout the curriculum, teachers present a range of voices in order to expand students’ worldviews in culturally meaningful ways. Ultimately, the English Department graduates accomplished students who read critically, write confidently, strive for originality, and value creative inquiry.

Faculty

The English faculty brings with it a broad range of expertise and interests and employs an assortment of methodologies and styles. While student-centered discussions are at the center of most English classes, teachers provide a variety of critical lenses through which to read each text. These critical approaches run the gamut from Formalism and New Criticism, to Reader Response Theory and New Historicism.

College Ready

The combination of contemporary and canonical titles in Trevor’s English curriculum offers students an outstanding depth and breadth to their foundation in the Humanities. Furthermore, the access that students have to their English teachers helps them to think and discuss topics deeply, as well as self-advocate for themselves, as they head to college and the world beyond. The English Department graduates accomplished students who read critically, write confidently, strive for originality, and value creative inquiry.