Summer Reading Letter

Honors Literature Summer Reading
2010-2011
http://shshonorsenglish.blogspot.com

Dear Scholars,

You have chosen a challenging but rewarding path. I commend you for your courage, for your dedication to progress, and for your willingness to be great. This is a class for students with intellectual curiosity and a strong work ethic. Many great minds have walked this path and many have left great imprints on this community and on our society. I am hoping you will be one of those “legacy people.” I am more than happy you have made such a commitment to yourself and the future. Welcome to the fraternity of Great SHS minds: Welcome to the Honors English III Program.

With enrollment in this course comes a responsibility: a responsibility to the self. Your self-reliance should avoid plagiarism, should inspire you to press on, and should be celebrated for independent successes. For those students who become excited about the pursuit of knowledge and for those students who have found the transformational power of knowledge through experience, this is a class created by you for you.

You come with excellent recommendations from Ms. James. She finds you to be a proactive, “go get ‘em” crew. And, with that, you and I will have a successful journey through the mind’s of some Great American Writers and their great American works. We will seek to learn, to challenge, and to experiment with these ideas, in hopes that the knowledge gained from them will shape the evolution of our minds and our lives. Knowledge is not power if you merely have it: it is power only if you do something with it. And, we, will seek to put their words into our actions.

The summer reading program is an essential feature of the Honors English Program. The reading selection will get us started immediately the first week of school and will prepare you for other expectations, units, and events to come. From the beginning, you need to be prepared to take this class very seriously. So, you must complete the summer reading to remain enrolled in Honors English; it is not optional. The work I have selected for this summer session represents the consciousness of The American philosopher and through the main characters reflects the very essence of American culture and concerns: woven within Ishmael’s fabric of philosophy emerges a deep discussion with the American Self and questions what it means to change the world. So, close knowledge of this selection, along with the methods by which you read it, will inevitably improve your chance of success not only in the first weeks of school but also in this year-long class.

Throughout June and July, you will review mini-lessons in preparation for the summer reading unit. These min-lessons either review the knowledge I expect you to already have or will help provide you with the knowledge you need for this course and for the summer reading. Following your mini-lesson, you will begin our Class Read: Ishmael. Daniel Quinn's first book, Ishmael, won the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship, a prize for fiction presenting creative and positive solutions to global problems. He is also the author of Providence, The Story of B, and My Ishmael.

On the back of this handout, you will find an overview of the units, the assignments, and due dates related to Ishmael. Again, please read everything very carefully. In fact, always read anything I give you very carefully: skimming does not work in this course. Throughout this process, you may have questions; please feel free to contact me via text messaging, e-mail, or phone. I will also provide this information on our class blogspot. The address is found at the top of this letter. Good Luck and Happy Thinking;

Kindest Regards,