About

Although careful attention to writing and a deep love for literature run as common traits throughout the English faculty, there is no single way we teach. Walking through Bulfinch Hall on a class day, a visitor would see small classrooms, some with large tables, some with tablet desks arranged along the walls, and within them lively discussions, some led by carefully crafted questions, others steered by subtle course corrections. A visitor might also see faces trained on a screen – a student paper projected from a laptop, a scene from our film archive – or student pairs peer-editing one another’s work. A visitor might well expect variety in an English curriculum at a good secondary school, probably not with the pace and frequency typical at Andover.

Any competitive school will tell you their teachers love their work. Take a close look. In our English department some began careers in college teaching, then left for the more intimate classrooms of Andover; some believed from the start that secondary schools are where the most exciting learning happens; and some who write and publish and could make their livings with their art have chosen a life that meshes teaching and writing. Our program is exciting because we combine bright and motivated students with bright, well-read, and well-trained teachers - learners in a common endeavor, all focused on learning to read and write well.

There are three years in our required sequence, beginning in the ninth grade. Students who enter the school as tenth graders go directly into classes with students who began here as ninth graders, but new eleventh graders are placed into special sections reserved for them. Each year in the sequence stresses the same principles of close, thoughtful reading and careful writing, but as students move along, the sophistication and complexity climbs. We do not allow students to enter our curriculum above their grade levels or to accelerate through the sequence. We know we can address their particular needs at each level, and in the senior year they have an opportunity in our elective system to take more than one course each term.

We believe our students have common experiences in the different sections at each level, but there are very few required texts. Students in the ninth grade will all read Homer’s Odyssey (the Fitzgerald translation) during the winter, and eleventh graders will all read Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the spring; but for the most part, teachers select texts they believe will best address the common themes and skills targeted at each level. In the dormitories or at Commons over meals, a group of ninth graders is likely to be able to talk about self-discovery by hearing about a variety of texts; and eleventh graders will bring experience in tragedy and romance and in comedy and satire, but often with different texts. Informal discussions can be broad and rich, and when the students are re-sorted into sections the following year, they bring to class a reading experience not possible in a fixed curriculum.

Every year we hear from colleges – from professors and from our students who have moved along – that our students write well. Within our curriculum, we approach writing assignments differently, but we all pay attention to organization, clarity, and precision. We all stress drafting and rewriting, and we comment vigorously on student writing and work individually with those who need individual attention. We consider writing a process that is never quite done, and through modeling as teachers and as writers ourselves, we work to develop students who respect writing that is clear and lively and who expect these qualities in their own work.

Finally, a word about summer reading: we believe that our students should read in the summers following personal interests, whims, and curiosity. For a variety of reasons, we have steered clear of making a department list and urge students who believe they need guidance to consider suggestions from friends, parents, local libraries, and bookstores. We do, however, ask entering ninth graders all to read a common book – at the present time John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath; our intention is for all ninth graders to begin the academic year with a major novel already completed, a common experience to kick off the academic year.