Essay Prep: Reading the Essay

Are you looking to encourage big juicy conversations with your teens about meaningful topics like consumerism, race, self-image and the role of technology in our lives?

One way to get at these topics is to triangle in a third party opinion—essays written by well-respected and established authors. Alice Walker, Judith Newman, Brent Staples and Anna Quindlen are four such writers we enjoy sharing with teens, all found in this delightful tome—The Little Norton Reader.

In our Essay Prep: Reading the Essay online class, teens discover (often for the first time) that essays are compelling to read (and write!). They learn to see the “angle of vision” and to uncover bias or slant in the writing.

They gain skill to identify the difference between reasoned arguments and ranting an opinion.

They have a chance to examine thier own knee-jerk responses and then patiently re-examine the essay content to expand their critical thinking.

Too often educators and parents ask kids to write esssys before they’ve ever even read one!

This class—Essay Prep: Reading the Essay is the remedy!

Our students LOVE it.

One teen girl wrote:

“At the beginning of the class I had trouble finding the inspiration to write but towards the end I started writing first thing in the morning and got it done quickly without struggling to think of what to write next.”—Kate

My favorite comment though:

WEEK ONE: “400 words! That is going to take me forever to write!”
WEEK FOUR: “400 words?! I’m going to need 2000 words to talk about all the stuff in that essay.” —Isaac

Truly no other course out there like it! Sign up before it fills up (always does). Counts as a ¼ credit of English for high school.