COURSE OFFERINGS
It is important to understand the Summer Program from the perspective of the student as you begin to consider the best available courses. What begins in rather awkward fashion in trying to figure out the practical details of living with students from around the world, preparing for classes, exploring the different enrichment activities offered in the afternoon, and learning their way around our beautiful campus will often become something richer and more difficult to explain by the end of the program. Choosing the right course is hopefully just one aspect of the whole experience. The Summer Program faculty is very cognizant of the difficulty of managing all of these responsibilities, the challenge of the academic courses, and the normal apprehension of encountering something new. We have tried to find an integrated approach that will hopefully reveal for each student the joy of learning, the discovery of new ways of seeing the world through the enrichment activities, and the need to foster lasting friendships through conversation and play.
Please read the course descriptions carefully and then simply choose any three that look interesting to you. We will do our best to place students in courses of their choosing and that are commensurate with their age and ability. Classes begin on Monday, June 30, and conclude on Friday, July 25. All courses will meet Monday through Saturday.
ENGLISH
Literature
Why should we read literature? Does literature really matter? The purpose of this course is to acquaint the students, in word and in writing, with the vocabulary necessary for the study of literature and initiate them into the conversation of ideas that informs our culture. Students are expected to understand the essential elements of fiction, establish a habit of close textual reading, and comprehend the four basic genres, tragedy, comedy, epic, and lyric, that make up the literary universe. The underlying hope of this course is to establish a mode of discourse that will reveal the essential meaning inherent in literature. This hope rests on the firm conviction that students will discover that reading literature is a task that should engender delight. Readings in the past have included Homer's Odyssey, Aeschylus' Oresteia, Dante's Purgatorio, Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Malory's King Arthur and His Knights, Shakespeare's As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Winter's Tale, Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, and Romeo and Juliet, Twain's Huckleberry Finn, Faulkner's The Unvanquished and The Reivers, Flannery O'Connor's Short Stories, Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding, Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits, and numerous other works of wonderful fiction.
English Composition
Why do we need to write well? Writing is perhaps the deepest clarification of our thinking and demands particular attention to style and content. This composition course provides instructors with a forum for the exploration of the poetical and rhetorical aspects of composition, a reduced class size necessary for individual instruction in the practical mechanics of written expression, and the opportunity for a more intensive focus on each student and their individual writing style and development. All assignments are followed by a closer scrutiny of usage. Whether the assignments come from such foundational texts as Strunk and White's The Elements of Style or a complex descriptive essay on Gorgonzola, the hope is that the students will begin to write well and that they will see the act of writing as something intrinsic to being fully human.
Creative Writing
Do you like to write stories, poems, or scripts? This writing workshop is designed to encourage you in your creative effort. Readings in both antique and modern styles introduce a wide range of strategies and techniques for developing writers to imitate or critique. Close editing by instructors and peers inspires developing writers to read their own prose with a more demanding eye.Students will hopefully discover their own unique voice through a close reading of poems, short stories, dramatic scenes, and excerpts of novels, while exercising their own creative faculties.
Public Speaking
Are you nervous about speaking in public? Do you ever wonder why some people are very comfortable speaking and others find it unbearable? Is it really important for everyone? More importantly why is public speaking so central to democracy? As the great Edward R. Murrow once remarked about Winston Churchill's oratorical power: "He mobilized the English language, and sent it into battle." Churchill overcame a speech impediment by constant practice and mastered his fear of making speeches through the meticulous preparation of speeches that came to rival Pericles' Funeral Oration and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. This course in the art and craft of public speaking is an introductory course for the inexperienced student. It covers the basic strategies of public discourse and provides the student intelligent approaches to a variety of speaking situations. From a simple speech conveying information to parliamentary debating techniques each student will have an opportunity to practice this craft and learn to offer positive critiques to other students. Public speaking is a valuable and useful skill that should prove invaluable in building the confidence of the students as they begin their own journey into the public realm.
English As A Second Language (ESL)
Do you want to experience a new and different approach to learning a language that will give you a practical and functional grasp of English? This is an intensive language course for international students who wish to improve their English in a program that will instill the habits of true and effective learning. Students are required to speak English at all times and to immerse themselves fully in the language. Student interest, aptitude, and motivation are essential for the success of the program. We have created a learning situation that allows everyone to fully participate and experience a sense of progress that is exciting, stimulating, and self-rewarding. It is our expectation that the students will improve their mastery of reading, writing, speaking, listening, and culture. Preparation for the TOEFL exam is also incorporated into the program. This course meets for two periods each day to ensure the greatest concentration of effort.
Latin for English
How is studying Latin one of the best ways to improve our command of English and cultural literacy? Much of our vocabulary derives from Latin, and a grasp of Latin grammar and syntax teaches us how sentences really work. The purpose of this course is to introduce the student to the basic vocabulary, grammar, and syntax of Latin. Each day the students will have an opportunity to exercise what they have learned by translating sentences and answering very specific questions about their reasoning.
HISTORY, POLITICS AND ECONOMICS
Great Ideas in American History
This course explores America's defining principles and their implications through the writings of the country's greatest political thinkers and insightful visitors from abroad. Students explore the unending tug-of-war between the ideals of individual Liberty and Equality through the perspectives of Paine, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, Madison, De Tocqueville, Calhoun, Lincoln and others. The emphasis on reading like historians and composing clear, compelling prose prepares students for the critical and rhetorical challenges of the prep school classroom.
Economics
What is money? How old should we be before we start thinking about personal finance and the responsibility to manage our money? This course provides the student with a clear and intense study of basic economic ideas and concepts. The market, inflation, recession, money, stocks and bonds, and many other economic fundamentals will be explored. It is the clear expectation of the course that the students will have mastered the tools with which to understand their economic world.
Statesmanship
What does it mean to be a leader? Does our education prepare us to deliberate upon great and serious actions? Is there a way to understand human action as rooted in human choice rather than some non-rational force that is out of our control? As Hamilton reminds us in The Federalist Papers: "It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force." The purpose of this course is to introduce students to a tradition and mode of speaking that is central to being a leader. Students will contemplate the choices of ancient statesman from Sparta, Athens, and Rome to those more immediate and recognizable leaders in Europe, America, and throughout the world. Students should garner a sense of their own potential as leaders and the importance of making fundamental choices that lead to genuine freedom.
FAITH & CULTURE
Apologetics
T. S. Eliot remarked in his famous introduction to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: "For without some kind of God, Man is not even very interesting." It has been our experience that students want to be interesting, always have questions about their relationship to the divine, and have a keen awareness of the mystery of personal destiny. This course explores the reasonableness of faith, the dignity of the person, and the centrality of the Judaeo-Christian tradition to the culture of the West. If meaning is essential to our being fully human then the hope of this course is to give form to that desire through a rich conversation centered on the writings and reflections of Thomas Aquinas, Romano Guardini, C. S. Lewis, John Paul II, and others.
Film and Culture
What do Star Wars and The Incredibles have to do with one another? Finding Nemo and On the Waterfront? This course offers students an intense, interactive seminar and workshop on the methods, means, and substance of visual storytelling. Students will learn about the history and state of cinema through screenings, discussions and readings. They will be introduced to the larger story of cinema and its formal relationship to culture in the expectation that they will move from passive viewers to intelligent observers.
MATHEMATICS
Pre-Algebra
Are you worried about beginning Algebra 1 in the coming year? This course is intended primarily as a review for students who wish to begin Algebra in the following year and want to make sure they have a solid foundation in everything they should know to do well.
Algebra 1
Are you ready for Algebra? Did you have a really good start or would you like to make sure that you have the basics down in Algebra? Linear and quadratic functions are the major topics explored in this review/preview of Algebra 1.
Geometry
Are you ready for Geometry? Did you have a really good start or would you like to make sure you have the basics down in Geometry? Congruence and similarity are the major topics presented in this review/preview of Geometry.
AFTERNOON ENRICHMENT ACTIVITIES
The formal participation in each afternoon enrichment activity is designed to change the perspective of all the students in terms of how they see the complex relationship between water, landscape, and the environment, while providing a formative experience that will draw the students together as a community over the course of the four week program. These enrichment activities are designed to be fun, hands-on, and educational!
Plein Air Painting or Summer Afternoon Landscape Painting
In the Plein Air class students will receive an introduction to painting landscapes on location or nearby the Abbey campus. The focus of the activity will be drawing and painting from observation. Students will learn to study the world closely. They will be given the opportunity to try different drawing and painting techniques. Classes will include demonstrations, relevant art history, and a chance to be outside studying and painting the unique southern Rhode Island landscape.
Environmental and Marine Sciences
In the Environmental and Marine Sciences class the students are initiated into an understanding of the different marine environments through trips and activities on the bay, an excursion to a salt marsh, a boat trip to Prudence Island, and seining in the bay and nearby estuaries.
Please read the course descriptions carefully and then simply choose any three that look interesting to you. We will do our best to place students in courses of their choosing and that are commensurate with their age and ability. Classes begin on Monday, June 30, and conclude on Friday, July 25. All courses will meet Monday through Saturday.
