By Serena Garg '24

Recently in English classes, the sophomores have been reading the book Oedipus the King. Oedipus (Eh - de-phus) is a Greek tragedy written by Sophocles about a man who marries his mother and kills his father. In addition to reading this book, the 10th graders had to create group presentations involving the plot of certain pages, the themes, the literary devices and the images that relate to the story. They also had to find a song, a quote and a nonfiction article to go along with those pages. These presentations were designed to help students understand the plot better and learn to work together in groups.

In-class, rather than learning the plot of the book by reading the story, the English teachers let the sophomores know everything that happened in the book before they even started. The reasoning behind this was that people in ancient times used to watch Greek tragedies with the knowledge of the entire plot because they were so popular, just like how most people know the plot of Harry Potter before watching the movies. The students were able to see the foreshadowing and were able to connect with the characters more closely because of the harsh realities they were facing. “I really liked seeing the character growth and how each character went through a lot of phases and how you can clearly see that," shared Kate Yun.