Select a Department

Department

English

English Mission Statement

The mission of the Priory English Department is to cultivate engaged learners, critical thinkers, and clear communicators. Our focus on reading and writing about a variety of literary genres aims to develop students’ intellectual curiosity, empathy for diverse experiences, and sense of personal voice. By studying a range of texts-- from fiction to visual media-- across the boundaries of time, place, and culture, students explore how literature both reflects and shapes the world. Students uncover the relevance and intrinsic value of texts as they consider the historical and social contexts in which they are created. Through their English coursework-- from conventional literary analysis to innovative project-based learning-- students participate in a conversation of making meaning. We encourage them to see multiple perspectives, hear multiple voices, and articulate understandings with flexible and compassionate mindsets. Ultimately, our program emphasizes the importance of reading, thinking, writing, and speaking as powerful pathways to self-discovery and connection with others, as well as potential instruments for civic engagement and social justice.

English Curriculum Trajectory

Our program integrates a grade 6-12 humanities-based education. In middle school, students begin to develop the tools to become critical readers, writers, and thinkers. As they transition to high school, they sharpen these literacy skills through texts, essay assignments, and open-ended projects of increasing complexity and rigor. The 9th and 10th grade Foundations English courses introduce a range of literary genres and styles, and scaffold students’ mastery of formal composition by emphasizing close reading, literary analysis, the writing process, and grammatical conventions. This survey of the literary spectrum-- from World literature to Western canonical and contemporary texts-- prepares students to make informed course selections in the 11th and 12th grade, during which they are offered electives of diverse topics. Our upper division electives allow students to delve deeper into areas of their interests, and further reinforce the skills of research, critical analysis, evaluation, and synthesis of texts. These courses present a shift in rigor that invite students to investigate the intersectionality of economics, politics, sociology, and the arts; to grow a sense of equity and cultural sensitivity; and to practice intentional engagement in a learning community.

English Foundations I

Course Length: Year
Open to Grades: 9
Prerequisite: None

Estimated hours of homework per class period: 20 minutes
Graduation Requirement: Yes

This course explores genres of storytelling--a novel, a film, short stories, poetry, and a graphic novel from around the world. Given the broad geographic scope of the works, the essential knowledge centers on the study of culture, identity, and perspective. Students read and annotate, discuss interpretations, write analytical pieces, develop visual understanding tools, and craft creative prose that mimics the originals. The course culminates in a visual memoir that initiates students' reflections that occur in the English curriculum and lead to the personal essay before college applications.
English Foundations II

Course Length: Year
Open to Grades: 10
Prerequisite: Foundations I

Estimated hours of homework per class period: 25 minutes
Graduation Requirement: Yes. **** Students may elect to take this course for Honors credit at the outset of the semester.

Foundations II focuses on the relationship technology and science have with literature about the human experience. The course examines literature's ability to criticize society's flaws, to challenge the status quo, to promote civil disobedience, and to speak personal truths. The course uses novels, poetry, plays, and innovative works with characters who grapple with navigating societies and intersecting identities. Students write essays, character analyses, develop visual schemas of story facts and meaning, discusss close reading passages, and ultimately craft a reflection first-personal reflection on their interactions with technology and science that helps set a foundation for the personal essay at the end of junior year.
20th Century American Drama

Course Length: Semester

Open to Grades: 11, 12

Prerequisites: None

Estimated hours of homework per class period:

Graduation Requirement: Satisfies 1 of 4 required English semester electives at the Junior/Senior level. **** Students may elect to take this course for Honors credit at the outset of the semester.

Open to juniors and seniors, this semester-long English elective course explores award-winning plays from 1920-2020. The central question for the class is: What makes a drama effective as a piece of literature and as a performance? Ancillary questions include investigating the cultural circumstance when the work was published, analyzing themes with evidence, and the role of critical reviews. These learning goals augment current Departmental electives while also contributing a unique genre and new content. Most notably, the course offers students who profess an excitement about the stage to read a series of plays and trace the development of the field decade to decade. It also will ask that students view a cherished art form through many perspectives and perhaps challenge their interpretations of the material.
Advanced Topics: Post-Colonial Literature

Course Length: Semester

Open to Grades: 11, 12

Prerequisites: None

Estimated hours of homework per class period: 30 minutes

Graduation Requirement: Satisfies 1 of 4 required English semester electives at the Junior/Senior level.

In this course, students will study literature written in English from formerly colonized nations in their historical and cultural contexts. They will examine central concepts, questions, and debates in postcolonial studies. The course concepts include postcolonialism’s commitment to interrogating dominant history, indigenous cultures, forms of identity and attachment, and versions of modernity centered on the nation. It will also explore experiences of diaspora and migration and consider the relevance of the term "postcolonial" in the twenty-first century"? Essential Questions include: What histories produce postcolonial literature as well as the field of postcolonial studies itself? What literary forms and language choices do postcolonial writers use, and why? How are literature and politics related to one another? What are some problems with the very term “postcolonial”?

Taken together, AT Nature Writers (a semester course) and AT Post-Colonial Literature (a semester course) are replacing AP English Literature (a year-long course) for the 2025-2026 school year. Students will still have the option to sit for the AP English Literature Exam on-site at Priory. The instructor will advise such students how to self-study on the AP Exam.
Advanced Topics: Writers and the Wilds

Course Length: Semester

Open to Grades: 11, 12

Prerequisites: None

Estimated hours of homework per class period: 30 minutes

Graduation Requirement: Satisfies 1 of 4 required English semester electives at the Junior/Senior level.

In this course, students will discover the genre of nature writers in the United States over time. They investigate the reasons authors choose the genre and the outdoors as a sense of place to these writers: the wilderness, the mountains, lakes, National Parks, and more. The emphasis will be on creation of the genre and reading nature through writing. Students will discern the elements that contribute to “good” or effective nature writing, and they will emulate their understanding while practicing the craft.

Taken together, AT Writers and the Wild (a semester course) and AT Post-Colonial Literature (a semester course) are replacing AP English Literature (a year-long course) for the 2025-2026 school year. Students will still have the option to sit for the AP English Literature Exam on-site at Priory. The instructor will advise such students how to self-study on the AP Exam.
Award Winners NOW!

Course Length: Semester
Open to Grades: 11, 12
Prerequisite: Foundations I and II

Estimated hours of homework per class period: 20 minutes
Graduation Requirement: Satisfies 1 of 4 required English semester electives at the Junior/Senior level. **** Students may elect to take this course for Honors credit at the outset of the semester

This course explores the most recent award-winning literature in genres like journalism, novels, drama, young adult fiction, and more. The central question for the class is: What makes a piece of literature “great” in the eyes of the critics and awarding organizations? Ancillary topics include the role of critics and their reviews and the cultural context of “greatness”. The texts come from current lists of awards organizations like the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the Tony Awards, and others. Potential works include Bewilderment (Richard Powers, 2021), Last Night at the Telegraph Club (Malinda Lo, 2021), and The Inheritance (Matthew Lopez, 2019). Writing assignments include research into critical reviews, writing critiques, and analyzing the readings.
Banned Books

Course Length: Semester

Open to Grades: 11, 12

Prerequisites: None

Estimated hours of homework per class period: 30 minutes

Graduation Requirement: Satisfies 1 of 4 required English semester electives at the Junior/Senior level. **** Students may elect to take this course for Honors credit at the outset of the semester.

What do To Kill a Mockingbird, The Things They Carried, and 1984, have in common besides being books you read at the Priory? At some point, they’ve all been banned from schools or libraries. Why did people fear these books? Can books be “weaponized”? The First Amendment guarantees American citizens the right to free speech, but are there boundaries to this freedom? This literature course explores censorship and whether it’s ever justified. We’ll look at who has challenged books, what their reasons were, and when those books were successfully banned. How are these decisions related to social conventions, values, and fears? We’ll take a deep dive into banned novels as well as explore poetry and young adult literature. By semester’s end, you’ll be prepared to take a stand for the books you love.
Discourse of Dining: Food and Literature

Course Length: Semester
Open to Grades: 11, 12
Prerequisite: Foundations I and II

Estimated hours of homework per class period: 30 minutes
Graduation Requirement: Satisfies 1 of 4 required English semester electives at the Junior/Senior level. **** Students may elect to take this course for Honors credit at the outset of the semester.

Food, like books, can sustain and celebrate life. But also like books, food can serve as an expression of yearning and loss. In what ways is food intake about more than nutrients? And how can food choices be an act of social justice? Exploring food’s symbolic bonds between people and their environments, the course focuses on consumption and its rituals that can be simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary. The materials will detail relationships between traditional and modern agricultural practices, tracing the histories of people, land, food, and (dis)connection. Coursework will consider the meeting of food and word (in fiction, poetry, recipes, memoirs, and research) and the way it informs large social categories such as culture, gender, ecology, and family. With periodic Franklin Garden meetings, students actively apply what they read to the kitchen and the soil through cooking and gardening activities that relate to course readings.
Gothic Literature

Course Length: Semester
Open to Grades: 11, 12
Prerequisite: Foundations I and II

Estimated hours of homework per class period: 45 minutes - 1 hour
Graduation Requirement: Satisfies 1 of 4 required English semester electives at the Junior/Senior level. **** Students may elect to take this course for Honors credit at the outset of the semester.

What monsters lurk in the darkness of our collective consciousness? What are our greatest societal fears and anxieties, and where do they come from? In Gothic Literature, students will explore the gothic tradition and its many legacies, especially in our culture today. Students will critically examine the multiplicity of gothic texts as they respond to the crossroads of culture, economics, politics, and technology. Students will articulate in oral and written mediums how gothic literature continues to evolve as a form that expresses fear of the new, unknown, and misunderstood. The rigor of the course derives from an in-depth study of a wide range of texts, including fiction, poetry, essays, films, and paintings. Students will be expected to engage with diverse and challenging texts in a variety of contexts for informal and formal writing. This is the perfect course for lovers of monsters, ghosts, existential dread, psychoanalysis, and all things spooky!
Literature through the Camera Lens

Course Length: Semester

Open to Grades: 11, 12

Prerequisite: Foundations I and II

Estimated hours of homework per class period: 45 minutes - 1 hour

Graduation Requirement: Satisfies 1 of 4 required English semester electives at the Junior/Senior level. **** Students may elect to take this course for Honors credit at the outset of the semester.

In Literature Through the Camera Lens, we approach films as works of art that can be "read" like texts. In our reading of various films, we explore how directors, like authors, use a set of devices to convey meaning. For example, how might a director use angles and camera motion to illustrate a protagonist's state of mind? How do color scheme and motif work to reinforce a larger theme? Like texts, films can be read through a set of critical lenses to fully investigate their commentary on the world. With an aim to gain a deeper understanding of both individuals and societies, we employ psychoanalytic, feminist, queer, and postcolonial lenses to uncover what films can say about our minds, our relationships, and our place in the world.
Pop Fiction

Course Length: Semester

Open to Grades: 11, 12

Prerequisites: None.
Estimated hours of homework per class period: 30 minutes
Graduation Requirement: Satisfies 1 of 4 required English semester electives at the Junior/Senior level. **** Students may elect to take this course for Honors credit at the outset of the semester.

The slasher. The gunslinger. The femme fatale. The android. The superhero. The last girl. The gumshoe. The alien. The monster. The ghost. Whether in novels, graphic novels, film, short stories, or other genres, these figures feature prominently in the literature adolescents and adults consume. Critical responses to “best-selling” books often consider it as inferior to “literary” genres, though their stories resonate with millions of readers. Students will explore popular fiction spaces that respond to contemporary cultural exploration, commentary, and critique. The students will have choices and options for discovering popular fiction alternative visions of the world, because their narratives are deeply rooted in the time period of their creation.
Transcendentalists and Beats

Course Length: Semester
Open to Grades: 11, 12
Prerequisite: None

Estimated hours of homework per class period: 30 minutes
Graduation Requirement: Satisfies 1 of 4 required English semester electives at the Junior/Senior level. **** Students may elect to take this course for Honors credit at the outset of the semester.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.” This principle guides much of the thinking for the Transcendentalists, a group of American writers during the late 19th century, and also for the Beats, the loose collection of writers and artists in the mid 20th century. We will perform an in-depth study of these two movements in the context of their reactions to American culture. We’ll begin examining exuberant Transcendentalism in the broader context of Romanticism and its reaction to Enlightenment thinking. As we shift to the rebellious Beats, we will discuss the trends in American culture that sparked their own reactions and rejections during the Modern and early-Postmodern eras. Though more than 100 years separated these two movements, we will explore the strong influence the Transcendentalists had on the Beats. The essays of Emerson, Thoreau, and Fuller, the poetry of Whitman, Ginsberg, DiPrima, and Baraka, and the prose of Kerouac will lead us through an enlightening journey into American nonconformity.

Faculty

Michael Botsch

English, Residential Life

Upper School English Teacher

University of Notre Dame - M.Ed.
Saint Anselm College - BA

mbotsch@prioryca.org

2023
Kena Chavva

English

kchavva@prioryca.org

2024
Andrew Daniel

English, Middle School Core, History and Social Science

Middle School Humanities Department Head

(650) 851-6190

San Francisco State University - BA
San Francisco State University - MA

adaniel@prioryca.org

2005
Kathy Gonzalez

English

Upper School English Teacher

(650) 851-6171

San Jose State University - BA
San Jose State University - MA Education

kgonzalez@prioryca.org

2011
James Hatzopoulos

English

Upper School English Teacher

(650) 851-6416

Kenyon College - BA
Harvard Graduate School of Education - Ed.M.

jhatzopoulos@prioryca.org

2017
Jane Healey

English

English Department Chair

(650) 851-6104

University of Notre Dame - BA
Baylor University, - MA
University of Minnesota - Ph.D.

jhealey@prioryca.org

2021
Jessica Senn

English, History and Social Science

Middle School Humanities Teacher

(650) 851-6159

Stanford University - BA
San Jose State University - MFA

jsenn@prioryca.org

2017
Myles Somerville

English, Middle School Core, History and Social Science, Athletics

Middle School Humanities Teacher, Lacrosse/Basketball/Flag Football Coach

(650) 851-6148

Florida State University - BA

msomerville@prioryca.org

2010