Spring Elective: Challenging Education: Unexpected Journeys through School

Terms: 1
Grades: 11, 12, PG

Educational paths rarely go exactly as intended, despite thought, planning, hard work and often significant investment of time and money. Unexpected developments impact our choices, what we learn, and how we grow. Perhaps we discover talents and passions we didn€™t anticipate. Or a personal illness or public health crisis (like Covid€19) derails our best€laid plans. In this course, we will look at challenging educational journeys through literature and film, including excerpts from Wes Moore€™s The Other Wes Moore, Casey Gerald€™s There Will Be No Miracles Here, Jill Kerr Conway€™s The Road from Coorain, Tara Westover€™s Educated, Paul Kalanithi€™s When Breath Becomes Air, Josh Harmon€™s play Admission, and the films Mr. Holland€™s Opus, and Dead Poets Society. These narratives will allow us to examine how educational journeys are impacted by our families, the choices we make, circumstances beyond our control, and the complex world in which we live. We will think in terms of race, gender, and socioeconomic disparity, reflect on our own paths through school, and consider how these works and our own experiences challenge notions of what it means to become well educated.