AP Language is a course open to all juniors at Helena High interested in a challenging course focused on rhetoric and argument.
Debate class is an elective that combines argumentation with the study of philosophy. It’s open to all grade levels.
Word Clues is an honors course open to students of all grade levels. In it, we’ll build vocabulary through the study of Latin and Greek.
I thought I'd offer a few more detailed comments/concerns about the essays than the often cryptic things I write on them. While these are mostly negative, there are a number of positive signs: the quality of the writing is improving, a number of papers offered some very unique insight, and you did well, despite a […]
It's a Christmas miracle for the AP classes. Following some high level discussion, the following changes are going to take place over the next four days. Today's quiz and the essay for next week are the test for Love in the Time of Cholera.There is no test next week over Love in the Time of […]
Select one of the following essay prompts, and answer it in a well-developed, grammatically flawless essay:
DUE DATE: DEC 27th, 11:59 p.m.
1. Love in the Time of Cholera opens with a suicide. Jeremiah de St.
Amour kills himself in order to escape the humiliations of aging. As he
explains to his lover, “he had made the irrevocable decision to take
his own life when he was sixty years old.” Most of the characters fear
aging. Age seems to threaten both the dignity and memories of the
characters. How does the novel both counter and exacerbate such fears?
2. Garcia-Marquez prefers to describe himself as a realist writer. Yet,
he novel is clearly not realism in the sense that Tolstoy’s work was.
As Gene H. Bell-Villada explains, “ ‘reality’ for GGM consists not only
of everyday events and economic hardships, but also of such things as
popular myths, beliefs, and home remedies—not just the facts, but what
ordinary people say or think about the facts.” What do you make of the
more hyperbolic moments in Love in the Time of Cholera, such as the
number of Florentino’s affairs and his visit to Olimpia Zuleta’s grave?
(more below)
This is my fourteenth year at Helena High School,where I teach English III AP Language, Word Clues, Debate, and Speech. In my spare time, I enjoy grading essays, watching the San Diego Padres, and buying more books than I could ever hope to read.
I came to Helena High after a period of wandering that included attending law school for two days, coaching debate at Carroll College for four years, and teaching in Great Falls for nine months, but the real decision to become a teacher probably began in a theater in Billings, Montana, when I saw “Dead Poets Society” for the eleventh or twelfth time. As ridiculous as it sounds, that little movie helped me understand that my passion for language and literature was something that could be shared with others.
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