Humanities Electives

Storytelling with Stop Motion Animation
​Experiment with turning story ideas into stop-motion videos! You could learn about different types of stop motion animation, such as cut-out animation, lego animation, pixilation, claymation, etc. as well as how to use a green screen in movies and add your own special sound effects to increase your viewer’s engagement.

From Page to Screen
Is the book or movie better? We will study the process of how and why screenwriters and directors make the choices they do when it comes time to adapt the pages of a book into a movie screen in the theater! You will also take on the role of a movie director and plan how one of your favorite books could be turned into a movie...

Literature: The Evolution of the Hero
From the pedestals of mythology to the pages of comic books, heroes have always held a place in our minds and hearts. This elective is an in-depth look at where heroes come from, what makes them “heroic”, and how they have transformed (pun intended) over the centuries.  Beginning with readings and discussions of academic translations of Greek and Roman myths, students will explore the classical hero’s strengths, weaknesses, struggles, motivations, obstacles, relationships and odysseys. Viewing heroes through the lenses of science and technology, students will track and analyze how heroes have adapted to changing worlds and remained central characters in novels, film, television, music and comics.

Creative Writing with Druidawn for Reluctant Writers
Druidawn is a narrative-based learning program for reluctant writers. This unique curriculum was first developed in 1990 by Miriam Darnell for her reluctant boy writers as a way to motivate them to get words onto paper through the use of a fantasy role-playing game called Druidawn.

The key goal of the program is to help students to overcome writing anxiety. This program has been in existence for 35 years and have turned kids who absolutely hated to write, even refused to pick up a pencil, into writers who do it for pleasure.

The writing class uses the Legends of Druidawn game. This game is rather complicated to learn but children tend to pick up the rules faster than adults do. Legends of Druidawn is designed to relate to kids on their level, using terms and conditions they are quite familiar with (from playing questing games on the computer, or Nintendo, or role-playing games with their friends). The game is played with a writing coach over Skype.

Because the primary goal of the class is to develop a love for writing in reluctant writers, time in class will not be spent on grammar or spelling, as we have found that critiquing the students’ work as they are beginning to enjoy the writing process results in them losing the newly-found confidence they are acquiring.