Academics

In an increasingly technological world, the English Language Arts department at ILS brings a welcome blend of classical and contemporary education to reinforce that language and art are innately human domains. The mission of the department is two-fold: to help students use the En- glish language effectively in all media and for all purposes and to make students appreciate the role that literature can have in their lives.

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Teachers foster a welcoming learning environment in the English classrooms so that students feel safe to explore their personal voices, styles and opinions and to then develop the necessary skills to convey the former to their audiences, be it through essays or multi-media presentations or conversation and discussions.

Students read deeply and often, from diverse texts, to become informed and to be exposed to good writing they can then model. The students study elements of style and usage, work on differentiated vocabulary programs, and meet the rigor of academic writing, that culminates in a Senior-year research paper on literature.

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To further develop the skills of students, the department offers four Advanced Placement courses: the English courses AP English Language (11th grade) and AP English Literature (12th grade); and the electives AP Seminar (10th grade) and AP Research (11th grade).

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Students also have elective course options to explore creative expression and learn skills specific for careers in communications. Students may join Journalism and write, edit and publish our online newspaper, The Royal Courier. Students wanting to write creative fiction and poetry may join Cre- ative Writing and publish Inklings, our annual literary arts magazine. Students may also practice public discourse in our Speech class, which is paired with Social Media so that students may learn how to transfer that skill to the virtual environment.

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Teachers use lecture, read-along, Socratic circles, debate, student-driven presentations, and role-playing to bring literature to life for the students. Students learn how to apply literary theories and the conventions of the literary genres to their analysis and critiques of novels, short stories, poetry, and film. Through literature, students are able to imagine and gain understanding of diverse human experiences and to increase their ability to empathize with others. The capacity of fictional literature to make readers more empathetic gives the ELA department a mandate to teach con- temporary as well as classic literature so that our students might be moved to work towards a more socially just society in accordance with our Catholic social values.

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The department sponsors the National English Honor Society, Quill and Scroll (journalism honor society), Forensics (debate), and the Novel Bunch Book Club.