Classical Studies

Classical Studies at Kent are designed to acquaint the student with the most salient and lasting characteristics of Greek and Roman civilization. Latin is not, because it was not, a prerequisite for the study of Greek, and a student may choose a program in either area. Each year several students elect to take courses in both languages. We approach the elements of the two languages through a combination of modern linguistic techniques and traditional rigor. We place equal emphasis on the unique and intrinsic merits of literary works and on their role as the source of later Western literature. A full program of visual instruction is offered, in order to relate literature to its attendant art and architecture. Special attention is paid to the wide range of classical mythology.

English

Through a challenging academic curriculum, students in the Kent School English Department acquire the skills necessary to read and write effectively. Third-formers are introduced to literary genre and begin a formal study of English grammar; fourth-formers survey American literature; and fifth-formers examine English literature from Chaucer to the modern period. After this grounding in a traditional course of study, our sixth-formers choose from a variety of electives, ranging from Romantic Poetry to Magic Realism.

The Writing Lab provides assistance for Kent students in improving their writing skills. Students, recommended by their teachers, meet one-on-one with a faculty member who helps students learn how to plan, draft, revise, and edit their own essays. Students may also visit the Writing Lab without a scheduled appointment during weekly drop-in hours. The Writing Lab is located in the Library.

English 1

English 1 introduces students to the main genres of literature: poetry, short stories, novels, essays, and plays. They study English grammar formally, using Warriner's High School Handbook. They write essays, both personal and analytical, and they are encouraged to be active participants in class discussions. Works studied vary from teacher to teacher but may include The Odyssey, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Jane Eyre, A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, and Macbeth. All classes also study a unit on Biblical literature. An AP section is offered for those students whose past record and recommendations qualify them for honors level courses.

English 2

The English 2 curriculum introduces students to American literature. Students read poetry, short stories, novels, and plays, and continue their study of formal grammar. They continue to develop their ability to write analytical essays on the literature they are studying. Some teachers require them to keep response journals. Works studied include The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, and Death of a Salesman. In English 2 an honors (A) section is offered each year.

English 3

English 3 is an introduction to British Literature, beginning with the study of parts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in Middle English and including the reading of Henry 1V Part One, sections of Paradise Lost and Gulliver's Travels, Pride and Prejudice, Romantic poetry, Great Expectations, poems by Browning andTennyson, and, if time allows, some twentieth century poetry.There is some preparation for the SAT I and SAT II included in the curriculum also. Students write frequent critical essays, and in many classes, they also try their hand at writing poetry.Honors sections are offered at this level, and students in thoseclasses may take the English Language and Composition AP examination.

English 4

Students in regular English 4 take a fall term course in which all classes study essentially the same material—poetry, short stories, essays, and Hamlet—and prepare for the SAT I and the December SAT II. They choose from a list of elective offerings during the winter and spring terms. Qualified students may take Advanced Placement English.Those who choose to do so are required to take the English Literature and Composition AP in May. Some students in AP English also take an elective course for a term.

Summer Reading 2007

Students entering the fifth and sixth form are required to read The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, this summer. Third and fourth formers are required tp read Philip Pullman’s, The Golden Compass, the first of a series of three novels. In addition, students should read several books from the following list of books that have given both students and teachers pleasure over the years. The list obviously is limited, and there are many, many other books of equal merit that would provide hours of pleasure to their readers. Because of the proven relationship between broad, challenging reading and strong performance on the verbal SAT, and because reading is a pleasurable experience, the English Department urges all students to read widely during the summer.

Classics to read before college:
Austen, Jane: Emma
Bronte, Charlotte: Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily: Wuthering Heights
Carroll, Lewis: Alice in Wonderland, Alice Through the Looking-Glass
Dickens, Charles: David Copperfield, Oliver Twist
Dostoevsky, Fyodor: Crime and Punishment
Faulkner, William: Light in August
Fielding, Henry: The Adventures of Tom Jones
Hardy, Thomas: The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Return of the Native
Homer, The Odyssey (the Fagles translation)
Melville, Herman: Moby Dick
Tolstoy, Leo: Anna Karenina
Virgil, The Aeneid
Wharton, Edith: Ethan Frome

Great books for summer reading:
Austen, Jane: Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park
Defoe, Daniel: Robinson Crusoe
DuMaurier, Daphne: Rebecca
Eliot, George: The Mill on the Floss
Follett, Kenneth: Pillars of the Earth
Golding, William: The Lord of the Flies
Hamsun, Knut: Growth of the Soil
Irving, John: A Prayer for Owen Meany
Ishiguro, Kazuo: Remains of the Day
Jenkins, Elizabeth: Elizabeth the Great
Lewis, C.S.: Out of the Silent Planet, Till We Have Faces
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia: One Hundred Years of Solitude
Morrison, Toni: Beloved (named the best novel of the past 25 years by the NY Times)
Orwell, George: 1984, Animal Farm
Paton, Alan: Cry, the Beloved Country
Pirsig, Robert: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Renault, Mary: The Bull from the Sea
Sayers, Dorothy: The Nine Tailors, Gaudy Night
Shaw, G.B.: St. Joan, Caesar and Cleopatra, The Devil’s Disciple
Smiley, Jane: A Thousand Acres
Steinbeck, John: The Grapes of Wrath, The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights
Stewart, Mary: The Crystal Cave and others in this series of novels about King Arthur and Merlin
Wouk, Herman: The Caine Mutiny

Books people enjoy re-reading:
Cervantes: Don Quixote
Didion, Joan: Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Hardy, Thomas: Far From the Madding Crowd, Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Knowles, John: A Separate Peace
Lewis, C. S.: The Narnia books
Salinger,W.D.: Nine Stories, Catcher in the Rye
Turgenev, Ivan: Fathers and Sons
Verne, Jules: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Waugh, Evelyn: Brideshead Revisited
Wilde, Oscar: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Wolfe, Thomas: Look Homeward, Angel

Students who have been accepted into AP English classes will receive a letter with additional reading requirements sometime in July.

English as a Second Language

Placement in the ESL courses is determined for new students by testing at the beginning of the academic year and for returning students by a combination of testing and evaluation of the student's progress the previous year. Some students may move up a level during the course of the year, and some in the transitional level classes may move into a regular English class. Most students in the ESL program take two English classes daily, ESL Language and ESL Literature. There are three levels of ESL Language and three of ESL Literature.

Intermediate ESL Language

Intermediate ESL focuses on developing students’:

• oral and written fluency
• academic skills
• reading skills
• knowledge of English grammar structures
• vocabulary
• American pronunciation

In addition, students in Intermediate ESL:

• learn about contemporary issues
• read and write poetry

Intermediate ESL Literature

In the past year, students in Intermediate ESL Literature have read short stories, A Christmas Carol, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, The Second Summer of the Sisterhood, Night, and The Diary of a Young Girl.

Advanced ESL Language

Advanced ESL Language provides students with:

• an understanding of the elements in a well-written paragraph and essay.
• Instruction and practice in writing using various organizational methods and sentence structures
• knowledge of the writing process
• reading and discussion of a variety of current event articles and essays
• practice with new vocabulary and idiomatic expressions
• TOEFL and SAT practice

Advanced ESL Literature

Last year's Advanced ESL Literature students read the following novels and plays: Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, Winesburg, Ohio, Brave New World, Romeo and Juliet.

Transitional ESL Language

Transitional ESL Language gives students an opportunity to sharpen their knowledge of English through:

• intensive grammar practice
• advanced-level readings
• writing assignments
• research projects
• discussions and debates
• practice with new vocabulary and idiomatic expressions
• TOEFL and SAT practice

Transitional ESL Literature

Last year's Transitional ESL Literature class read the following novels and plays: Ethan Frome, Fahrenheit 451, Death of a Salesman

Science

The newly renovated Dickinson Science Center houses Kent’s modern, well-equipped science laboratories. The science requirement is a minimum of two years of science beyond the level of Science Explorations or its equivalent. However, more than 90 percent of students elect additional courses, preparing in breadth and in depth for college work in science. A carefully planned choice of electives, including a varied offering of rigorous term courses, makes possible four years of science study appropriate to the interests of the student. Laboratory sciences normally meet each week for six periods, two of which are joined as a double-length lab period.
The new science facility was completed in 1997 and upgraded science at Kent. There are 10 large lab/classrooms used for regular science classes, and 3 dedicated APlab/classrooms. Teachers are free to teach the way they want rather than being constrained by lack of space. With computer access to all the lab stations, the school lap top project can truly flourish in the lab.

The classrooms are outfitted with benches which allow students to use them for taking notes, using their computers, or when needed, they can be moved to where they can help with the running of the labs. The physics labs will have built-in variable power supplies and which will allow controlled voltages to the lab stations. The chemistry labs are all outfitted with fume hoods so that all wet chemistry will be done under a hood. This will protect students and will reduce odors as well. Biology labs are outfitted with a fume hood and lots of space for experiments that run for long periods of time.

Because the labs are all lab/classrooms, mini-labs can be done as a part of the class and then the apparatus can be set aside so other work can be done. If an experiment is unfinished one day, it can be completed the next day with no conflicts with other classes.Teachers share a teaching space with, at most, one other teacher and they have time to set labs and demos up without interference from other classes.

History

History is the culmination of an individual nation’s or a community’s heritage, environment and the maturation of political, social and economic institutions. The history program explores epochs in which extraordinary activity and intellectual ferment created spirit, enterprise and advancement in human development. The department encourages a healthy skepticism by stressing the two-sidedness of each historical question and teaches the students to extract significant information from readings in primary and secondary sources. Students learn to synthesize data into meaningful hypotheses from which they can express ideas clearly in discussion, examination and extended research.

Mathematics

At all levels, the Kent program emphasizes reading mathematics, solving problems and communicating results. We appropriately challenge students who come to us with a wide range of backgrounds and interests, embracing the best teaching tools. Graphing calculators and tablet PCs are used extensively throughout the curriculum.

Kent offers a great depth and breadth of mathematics - twenty different courses. To facilitate the expectation that students work at a course level commensurate with their ability we provide different levels (regular, honors, accelerated and AP) for many of the courses. For example, all Geometry, Algebra II & Trigonometry, and Precalculus courses are each offered at the regular, honors and accelerated levels of study.

All course selections require approval of the mathematics department. They range from Algebra I to courses beyond AP BC Calculus (equivalent to a two semester college course in Calculus) and include AP Statistics and AP Computer Science. Courses with multiple sections have departmental examinations in order to ensure consistency. We are in the process of implementing a pre-engineering curriculum as a new discipline in our traditional liberal arts program.

The current curriculum includes:

Algebra I (regular and honors)
Geometry (regular, honors, and accelerated)
Algebra II & Trigonometry ((regular, honors, and accelerated)
Functions
Functions Trigonometry and Statistics (regular and honors)
Precalculus (regular, honors, and accelerated)
Introduction to Calculus
AP Statistics
AP AB Calculus
AP BC Calculus
AP Computer Science

Every year, about 15% of the Kent student body participates in the American Mathematics Competitions and 10% in the New England Math League. Other mathematic competitions that students are involved in include Worcester Polytechnic Institute's Invitation Mathematics Meet, Harvard-MIT Mathematics Tournament (HMMT), Purple Comet Mathematics Meet, High School Mathematical Contest in Modeling (HiMCM)

Modern Languages

The Modern Language Department strives to equip students with the language tools they need in order to thrive in today's global community. It is our goal that all Kent graduates take with them a sense of understanding and appreciation for different peoples and cultures. With a wealth of technological and cultural resources, we provide instruction in Chinese, French, German, and Spanish.

In addition to our video-ready classrooms, students learn in the Mattoon Language Learning Center, one of the most sophisticated language labs in the country. All language classes at Kent, from first-year to AP, have regular access to the lab. The Center comprises 20 student stations, each with audio tape, headphones, video monitor, as well as keyboard, mouse, and port replicator for students' laptops. Teachers can monitor the class's work and communicate with any student or group via headset. The Center allows classes to use many forms of audio and video media: VHS, Laserdisc, audio disc or cassette, live video presentation, live audio, or any software application including local and internet networking.

Theology

All theology courses are offered on a term-contained basis. Theology 1 and Theology 2 are two foundation courses; completion of one of these is ordinarily a prerequisite for other elective courses.

Theology 1 (fall, winter, spring)

This course is required of all fourth form students. The primary sources of the Old and New Testaments are studied with an emphasis on the history, faith and teachings of Judaism and Christianity.

Theology 2

(fall, winter, spring)In this class theology is presented as an enterprise, a dialectic, something that can be questioned, probed, studied, discussed and experienced. Students read selections from the Old and New Testaments, as well as books by such writers as Thomas Merton, Catherine Craven, C.S. Lewis, Graham Greene and others. The theological and experiential roots of belief and the Judeo-Christian responses to theological questions are studied. Students are encouraged to reflect upon their own experiences as well.

Masterpieces of Christian Art

This course offers an exposure to works of creative spiritual genius in the Western tradition and in the fields of architecture, art, music and poetry. The course begins with the identification of those biblical elements which subsequently proved to be fertile ground for the growth and flowering of artistic creativity and then proceeds with an examination of some of the greatest results of that creativity.

Comparative Religion

This course examines the nature of the Divine as it is understood by the great religions of the world. The fundamental aspects common to all faiths are explored through discussions of worship, revelation and community, followed by investigations of Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The course seeks to give students an appreciation of the basic principles and rich heritage of each world religion in order that they might enrich their own religious understanding and gain insight into the global community.