The Most Interesting English Classes. 

 

In not many English classes will you hear the teachers rant forever on topics that could open you to many new opportunities. You would never think that in a high school English class you would get the opportunity to conduct a virtual interview with sports news reporter, Adam Schefner. If you are interested in classes like these then you have to take these three classes at Paul D Schreiber High School. Utopia Dystopia, Journalism, and Film and Literature are all incredible courses that you can take. At Schreiber the opportunities felt endless with all the different classes you could take, and there are still some English classes that I would still like to take. Many of my teachers pushed me and all of them assigned many intriguing essays that I am very proud of. In the past I struggled a lot with English class, for instance with handing in work, and not being intrigued to read some articles. However, when I started going into the english classes that I wanted to take like Utopia Dystopia, Journalism and Film and Literacy. They became some of my favorite classes that I have taken and helped me perform better as a student and writer. I advise all students interested in finding intriguing english classes to take some of the courses I chose.

One class I highly recommend that any high schooler should take is Utopia Dystopia. In this challenging course, Mrs. Gokturk teaches you about the different types of societies and realities in many different short stories, and novels. She will give you challenging articles to read and many different short stories to write multiple papers on. This class opened my mind to many things in our society today and made me realize that not everything is always what you think it to be. One short story was about a dystopian society that only wore masks, and the most beautiful people were forced to wear the ugliest, most tasteless masks and were forced to walk with weights and chains, while the uglier people wore beautiful and elegant masks and got to walk around freely. This story stuck with me that year because it was the first time that I had to think about the way that people thought about you based on your appearance. The beautiful ones who were really ugly on the inside got the chance to do whatever they wanted and were given more freedom rather than the people who were ugly on the inside and beautiful on the outside. To read a passage like this in high school is very important for young insecure girls specifically because I believe it helped me see people in my life differently. Being a young student in this class will help you realize that there are so many different types of societies that you could not fully wrap your head around unless you took the class. 

The second class that I took in high school was a very popular class called film and literature. This was one of the hardest classes to get at my school because the main course was watching and analyzing them. My teacher, Mr. Corbo, will show films related to topics of today and will get you intrigued. If you take this course you’ll watch movies like Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Ladybird, Creed, a League of Their Own, and Hoop Dreams. Although all those movies sound fun, the papers that I wrote were fairly challenging and got me thinking a lot. Many of the papers were comparing two different movies and finding similarities between them. The most interesting topic I found to write about was the film Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, and Ladybird which is a story that follows two teens who are trying to make one of their friends, Rachel, who was diagnosed with cancer, last few months memorable and happy. The movie Ladybird was compared to the coming of age in two different settings. This caused a lot of deep thinking for my classmates which many of them have never done before. You watch movies that you would never expect to enjoy, and will open your mind and give you a more in depth way of watching movies. This course was one of my favorites in high school because it was still challenging and fun which made me want to learn more and even helped me view movies in a different way. Going in depth on the different shot types, and learning about the different ways to manipulate the screen to make emotion was fascinating to me and as a photographer I learned more than just analyzing movies but the real artistic view of it as well. 

Finally, the most  important class I believe everyone should take should be Journalism. This was easily the most important class that I took all throughout high school. This class created many opportunities for me as a senior that I never thought I would ever get the chance to do. Taught by Dr. Sachs, she will teach you about the different types of investigative journalism and allows you to write about the topics and discussion that you chose according to the topic. I wrote many papers from famous photographer, Dorthea Lange, and political events like the riots on December 6th. Your writing skills really get to flourish in this class and you will write some of your best papers. In rare instances if your classmates have the right connections (like in my class), you could be lucky enough to land an interview with the famous sports news reporter, Adam Schefner. This was the peak of my high school English classes. My class got the opportunity to ask questions for 30 minutes and I learned many valuable lessons in that short period of time. When I asked him where he got his motivation to keep pushing to get where he is now. He explained that to get to the point of success like that, you have to put in the hours and remind yourself why you’re there. You can’t master something unless you’ve put in your 10,000 hours. You don’t wake up overnight and have all the work laid out in front of you, but instead you must keep your mind motivated and make your space in your industry. After that interview this class became my number one favorite class to take in high school and I highly recommend it for anyone to take. Although not every class will have the pleasure of meeting someone like Adam Schefner, it is still something that could be taught to many and create the same impact. 

All of the classes that I took in high school could not compare to many of my English classes. I’ve taken many interesting classes however overall I extremely enjoyed these particular courses and highly recommend all of them. The teachers are very helpful and will work with you and push you to improve. Each of these classes made a big impact for me as a student because not only did they give me the freedom to write but also taught me many important life lessons as well. I think everyone should try and take at least one minded class like these because they show you different sides to everything. Learning about different topics and seeing the whole picture is one of the most interesting discussions to have in class and these classes will do so. I highly recommend each of these classes and enjoy them as much as I did.