“We read literature to know we are not alone.”
This quotation remains with me to this day. With the focus in education shifting to more testing, factual information, and reading passages instead of complete works, I worry that people are moving away from novels. Personally, I felt misunderstood most of my life (still do) and being immersed in a novel made me feel safe. People often say “fiction is fake,” but nothing can be farther from the truth.
Think about the documentary we viewed on James Baldwin, I am Not Your Negro. In every interview, he tries to explain his experience and no one on the panel appears to understand. I can see why fiction became such a valuable outlet for him, another way of trying to make others see the world as it exists. Reading between the lines is vital, especially with the landscape we live in now.
I have never been much of a phone person, and I do not use social media. This year, I replaced scrolling through my phone with carrying a physical book with me. As a result, I have read four major novels and two works of nonfiction since January. I read To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, reread Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, explored Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, as well as revisited Anna Karenina by LeoTolsty. For nonfiction, it was The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine Nand Aron and Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life by Joshua Fields Millburn. In every case, I found myself questioning the world around me and discovered answers in a book. I also reconnected with drawing and painting. Playing guitar. This came from literature. Reading helped me focus, see what is important and move away from daily minutiae. I hope you will continue to read literature in your life, disconnect from the anger in the world and find peace.
Whatever you choose to do in the coming year, do your best to recognize the “ghosts” and make the best decisions for you. Be kind to yourselves. If you see an opportunity to travel – take it! Explore the world. Remember, “We all came out of Gogol’s Overcoat. One day you will understand.”
I wish you all the best in your future endeavors.
Mr. P.
Directions: In this space, please share your experiences in A.P. English. What works had an impact on you? What discussions? Lessons? Blog discussions? Anything to share to improve the course would be welcome, too.
AP English was the class I looked forward to everyday. From the poem of the day to the in-class discussions, Mr. Pellerin kept the class and readings fun and different. While the work we did felt useful and I feel that I learned a lot throughout the school year, it never felt like busy-work or a chore. My favorite work from this year was our reading and discussions with Beloved, by Toni Morrison. Though I enjoyed the book itself, with the pairing of the James Baldwin works and the 13th documentary on Netflix, I found it ever more interesting and eye-opening. The perspectives of racism covered in the class felt more real and less white-washed than those of the other classes I have taken. I also liked how Mr. Pellerin gave us the opportunity to make our own work, through reading a text of our choice and doing some additional research. As a result, I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and made a children’s book addressing racism as my final, multigenre project. It was about two eggs, one a brown egg and one a white egg. From the beginning, the eggs seem visually different, but, by the end, we learn that they are the same on the inside.
ReplyDeleteThanks for a great year!
I have really enjoyed AP Literature this year and found the everything we read very enjoyable. I haven't really had that experience where I have not wanted to read something we were assigned this year and I felt for each book or short story we read, we had a good amount of time for each one. I enjoyed Beloved, A Doll House, and Ghosts the most out of all we read. I also appreciated how for the last project, we got to pick our own novel to read. I would have most likely never gotten around to reading Pride and Prejudice, a book i've wanted to read for a while now, if I didn't get the time to do it this last month. Overall, I thought the blog was a really effective way to talk about the works we were reading and discuss with one another. It allowed me to enjoy the stuff we were reading a lot more without the stress of a huge research paper or gigantic project at the end. Often times in english classes, I find I cannot truly enjoy the novel when i'm reading it, as I usually have to write notes for grades and do a lot of busy work/projects for each novel. With this class, I did not feel the same stress and it allowed me to reconnect with literature, as it reminded me how much I actually do enjoy reading. For me, this was the biggest takeaway from this class and i’m really happy I took it, as it was one of my favorite classes all year. Thank you for the great year!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed exploring literature through the AP lense this year. I have always felt that fictional writing was a place to come to when I wanted to distract myself from the real world. But through this class, I feel like it’s become not only a place of refuge but a place of great knowledge. Understanding more advanced literature like Beloved and Ghosts has made me more aware of details not only in characters and settings but in real people and places. Becoming more aware of the world around me is something I always wanted to accomplish, but never knew how. Seeing the dollhouses, the ghosts, the cyclical cycles of time throughout the world is quite astonishing and awakening. The works and topics we covered felt very relevant. I really liked the documentaries we watched near the beginning of the year named 13th and Inequality For All. I can’t pinpoint exactly why but these two films were the first times I truly began to understand America’s deep racial issues and economic issues. I also really liked that we had the freedom to talk and read about works that we chose for the last project. Ari and I chose 100 Years of Solitude and it is definitely one of my favorite books that I’ve read in a long time. Thank you for everything, I’m so glad I was able to experience this class!
ReplyDeleteOverall, I enjoyed my experience in AP Literature. Looking back at the beginning of year, I am able to see a large progression in my writing abilities, something I am glad about. Comparing my writing from the diagnostic in June to the AP exam in May has been eye opening and I am able to see improvement in my skills. Something that had an impact on me was the “Don't ask where I'm from, ask where I'm a local” TED Talk. It was an eye opening experience for me, as someone who has lived in Andover my whole life and did not take into account the different possibilities of someone’s story. Getting to hear everyone’s point of views on the topic was interesting and it was nice to see people open up. I enjoyed the personal blog reflections the most because you could feel the student’s connection to what they were writing. This class also helped me get back into reading more often outside of school. Our final capstone project where we got to select a book of our own was nice because I was able to read for myself, something I had not done in quite some time. This class was one of the best experiences I have had in English in my time at Andover High School. Thank you so much for a great year!
ReplyDeleteAP Literature was one of my favorite classes this year. I thought that the course was very well put together, along with your teaching style. I really enjoyed reading Beloved. I loved how you could look at it in different ways and see the novel in a different perspective. When we were writing essays, I never felt that I was writing them for no reason. The essays were more about exploring a topic than getting a good grade. The ideas that we explored were really meaningful. We went into depth on the things that we talked about which was good. I never felt like we were doing busy work. I also really enjoyed how we read some plays and also watched the movies. I understood what we were reading in the plays but watching the movie along with the play really solidified my understanding. In almost every english class I have been in, I think it has been hard for me to want to read and understand the books. Our resources these days makes it so easy for us to not read novels and not truly understand. Many of us just read summaries to get by. However, this course made me remember how much I enjoy reading. I wanted to understand the novels in depth instead of just reading summaries to get a good grade. I also think that the speed that we read the novels at was really helpful because I never felt rushed to finish a certain part. I felt prepared for the AP exam even though I felt that we did other things besides review for the exam.
ReplyDeleteThroughout the year in this class I feel like I have grown into a more confident writer. Looking back on all the work I did this year and seeing how I followed the five paragraph essay to now understanding my writing better so that I am not following a strict format. One of the lessons that really impacted me was when we did The Namesake. I really enjoyed that book and it is actually one of my favorite books that I have ever read in school.
ReplyDeleteWhen I look back on the blog posts and see people talking about Beloved it reminds me about how much we did in this class and how far we have all come. One blog post that I particularly enjoyed was the blog post about our ghosts in our own lives. I think one think I really liked about this class was the blog posts and that people were allowed to speak their mind. While our class was more quiet I think that you could hear people's voices in their blogs which I appreciated.
In the end, I felt that my multi genre project had a big impact on me. The issue I choose, climate change, was different and I felt that in the beginning of the year I would not have had the knowledge to tie my book and climate change together and that the student I am now has gained an immense amount of knowledge.
I loved AP Lit. Especially the pieces we read. Beloved has become one of my favorite novels, I loved how Toni Morrison created the duality in Beloved. I really loved A Dolls House and Ghosts, so much that I read An Enemy of The People on my own. I think what I got from this class was the ability to read some really great books and plays that I would never think to read on my own. And now, I have started off reading Les Miserables, which I probably never would have done if it wasn't for this class, and I will hopefully be able to continue reading it. AP Lit was an informative class like any other AP class but without the gallons of stress. It was very relaxed, but I also felt very prepared for the exam. Thank you Mr. Pellerin, for the wonderful experience.
ReplyDeleteI had a great time in AP Literature. I never felt stressed or overburdened as I have in other AP classes. We constantly explored relevant and meaningful points of discussion, but the important distinction is that I never felt like the class was just one big deadline like other classes seem to be. Thanks to our deep dives into works like Beloved, I feel like I have become more skilled at picking a text apart and putting it in a larger context. The works we read were all worthwhile and I appreciate the fact that we were always given a chance to voice what we hoped to dive into next. I was impressed with how the daily lesson plan could be molded to be comfortable for everybody. Thank you for a fun, interesting, and often hilarious class, Mr. Pellerin. I admire your teaching style and enthusiasm for the subject. Classes like this are a breath of fresh air in an education system that it’s easy to become cynical about.
ReplyDeleteThis was the first experience with blog posts, and they were one of my favorite parts of AP Lit. I believe perspective is an integral part of development and awareness, and the blog provided a great space for reading of the views/posts of your classmates, and then responding to it. I also appreciated the accepting nature of our class, and that I felt comfortable posting about personal, joyful, or sad experiences in my life as it related to the text we were reading. The posts were great resources to refer to for essay writing, and a lot of the time relieved my stress. The blog showed me that I am capable of producing quality responses in shorter time periods, which helped me greatly improve my timed essay writing skills. Last year, I struggled to finish half of an in class essay, and now I can write with time to spare for revisions.
ReplyDeleteThank you Mr. Pellerin for having us study the play The Importance of Being Earnest. My favorite concept during the year was learning about Oscar Wilde's perception of aestheticism, which changed me in a way to be a less tense and more "fun" reader, allowing me to let the text entertain.
Thank you (number two) Mr. Pellerin for always starting off class with an intriguing, thoughtful, and sometime humorous poem. Hearing a poem read before class began helped me mentally prepare for the type of thinking needed to effectively and creatively analyze different texts, films, and videos.
The works which had the most impact on me during the year were Beloved and Ghosts. These two works quickly became my favorite pieces of writing, period. The level of detail and analysis allowed me to see the complete picture envisioned by the author. Although I will give myself some credit that I have grown as an english student, I also have to thank Mr. Pellerin greatly for reigniting the passion and excitement towards fiction which I had previously lost, before the course had began. Learning about James Baldwin and Toni Morrison, and connecting their experiences to the modern day led into some of the most engaging and eye-opening conversations about race and racism I’ve even been a part of. The blog discussions in which we talked about our life experiences, and opened up about our lives helped me to realize certain aspects of myself, which helped me improve as a student and as a person during the year.
ReplyDeleteGoing into my senior year, I was scared of how grueling of a class AP Literature could be. The endless essays and books we would have to read made me very uneasy. However, I was very pleased to learn how relaxing learning literature could be. I loved coming in every morning and being able to have a relaxing start to the day. Often times, hard classes can be so much that I treat literature can become work as opposed to an interest, and this class was able to stay far away from that. I had a lot of hard classes this year, so it was nice for one of my AP’s to have a laid back but still effective approach to learning literature. I found the final project to be very enjoyable. It had been a long time since I was able to create my own project without guidelines and it found it very interesting to go about. Additionally, I felt very prepared for the AP Exam and am confident that I did very well. Overall, this class was a relaxing break from a sometimes-stressful year. Thank you so much Mr. Pellerin for making literature fun and interesting!
ReplyDeleteI think AP Literature was one of my favorite classes. Not even because it was an english course, but because it was something more than a standard, cookie-cutter, period of the day. I really underestimated what a relaxing transition into the school day could do in terms of mentally preparing for the day ahead of me. Aside from the ambiance, the works we explored and discussions had afterwards sparked my thinking outside the box. For example, Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen. Opening my eyes to this reality and being able to apply it to my daily life has been truly valuable; this is how literature comforts us. Exposing truth through fictional works allows us to easily make connections between the Ghosts in our lives, especially ones we refuse to confront. Blogging about our thoughts and perspectives throughout the year also made it easy to read about how different we can perceive the same pieces, and this was one of my favorite parts. Coming together and sharing how we perceive different sides of the same coin is a timeless way to grow as a community.
ReplyDeleteAP Literature was definitely one of my all-time favorite English classes. I think the biggest reason for this was you, Mr. Pellerin. Everything about your teaching style, from your focus on literature rather than on tests, classwork, and deadlines, to your humor in the classroom, really made this class come alive. I've also come to really appreciate the blogs. I like that with the blogs, we get to read about different points of view rather than writing an essay where we're just developing a single point of view and not really being exposed to other ideas. I also like how in the blogs we're allowed, and even encouraged, to acknowledge parts of the work that we don't understand, or ideas that we have that we're unsure of. I think this allows for a clearer understanding of the text. Furthermore, I tend to be more quiet, so having these blogs helped me express my thoughts to a higher extent than I would have had we just been doing class discussions. As far as content goes, I really enjoyed the Freaky Freedom unit, since the book itself was completely different from anything else I’ve read, and I felt like having someone (especially since that someone wrote the book we’re reading) come over from Ghana as a supplement to the text really enriched that whole experience. I felt like The Importance of Being Ernest wasn’t as developed as I would have liked, because I think just watching the movie without reading most of the book was cutting out a lot of the literature part of the unit. Overall, I really liked this class, and I’m really thankful to you, Mr. Pellerin, for giving me such an enriching AP Literature experience for my last year of high school.
ReplyDelete