Communication skills—especially writing—are the single most important advantage you can give a child. Future performance in school and in the workplace is greatly enhanced by the ability to speak and write well. This course provides a six-week writing tutorial: forming a topic sentence and thesis, methods of organization, using transitions, sentence variety, basic editing techniques, writing introductions and conclusions, supporting points, and along the way, the “art of being a student.” Students are taught elements of description, narration, comparison, persuasion, definition, division & classification, as well as the underlying grammatical structure of English—the building blocks of sentences. The course uses today’s technology and popular media, including YouTube videos, vlogs and discussion threads, films, art, popular lyrics, film music, and literary excerpts to teach critical thinking and foster creativity. This is an active participation course with lots of one-to-one attention in a supportive environment.

In this second course of the Atlantic Communities sequence, the histories, societies and cultures of Europe and the Americas, along with those of Western Africa and the West Indies, continue to fuse together but the outlook is extended toward broader horizons. Students begin with the Industrial Revolution and end their study at the eve of the Cold War. The transformations of the Modern Age across the Atlantic Region, the development of liberalism as well as European and U.S. nation building including the tragedy of America’s Civil War are important points of focus. The course continues with WWI and the Russian Revolution. This is followed by an examination of the economic, political, and cultural reactions of the Great War in the 1920’s, which led to the global economic depression of the 1930’s, the rise of totalitarianism, and WWII. A research paper is a major requirement.