English Course Work

"It's never to late to be what you might have been."

~George Eliot

World Literature:

Drowning in Society:  This is a paper that explores the poems "Departure," by Alfonsina Storni, and "Love Song by J. Alfred Prufrock," by T.S. Elliot; it compares the way in which each author describe life and the way significant events with life are handled.

European Literature:

In this class I studied many international authors.  My eyes were opened to the wonders of authors such as Kafka, Brecht, and Durrenmatt.  Throughout the course of this class we studied multiple short stories and plays by each author and worked to place each work within its historical time period and the author's life.

British Literature III:

Youthful Innocence and the Bonds of Love:  This is a paper that compares the Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights with Wordsworth's poems "Michael" and "We Are Seven."  Childhood connections and the lifelong bonds they create are explored in depth in each work.

American Literature I:

Bleeding Hearts:  This paper looks at Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly.  It examines the way that Stowe uses tears throughout the novel to gain readers sympathy for the plight of slaves and their living conditions.

Contemporary Literature:

Confining Love:  This paper looks at Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs and Cowboys Are My Weakness by Pan Houston.  It describes the ways in which people who do not have good family support took to others for love and a way in which to find themselves and the problems that occur when they can no longer define who they are without the other person. 

Structure of the English Language:

Tutoring Project: This project is a demonstration of how I used what I learned in the classroom to help a struggling high school girl become better at reading, writing, and giving speeches.

Creative Dramatics:

Lesson Plan 1:  This lesson plan provides a twist on bringing poetry to life in the classroom.  Pantomiming different activities brought that correspond with each poem and then discussing the significance of each.

Lesson Plan 2:  This lesson plan demonstrates how a short story can be turned into a creative dramatics reading sequence game with just a touch of humor.  Students are involved and learn how voice inflection and tone quality affect giving speeches and reading aloud.  They also learn how location can bring about stereotypes, different speech patterns, and lots of fun while trying to play along in character.

Lesson Plan 3:  This group project was a lesson plan that we presented to a class of 4th graders.  It puts a twist on spelling word review and had the students out of their seats acting out words, trying to unscramble spelling words, and pantomiming a sequence game story.

Journalism:

Throughout the course of this class I wrote for the MC paper, The Oak Leaves.  I learned a lot about how to keep a reader interested and provide pertinent information at the beginning as many news readers do not complete an entire story.  This class also game me so much more respect for reporters and the job that they do.  Interviewing people and matching schedules is one of the toughest parts of reporting.

Theatre and Society:

Ruthless! The Musical Critic:  This is a performance critic after having attended the play.  This follows class guidelines of what a good critic should include.

Writing Through Literature:

Walls that Bind:  This is a paper that talks about the walls individuals build around themselves throughout life.  It looks at Robert Frost's "The Mending Wall" and the time he spent building a wall with his neighbor to always keep the other out instead of getting to know one another and inviting them into their lives. 

Introduction to Literary Studies:

Love Lost, Forever Gone:  This paper looks at Alice Hoffman's novel Here On Earth.  It questions the role reversals that take place and ponders how the two women go about searching for their identities while attempting to not giving into social standards.