INSIDE THE CLASSROOM (11th Grade—Juniors)

ABOVE: The Juniors celebrate the completion of the first section of the divine comedy with a costume party. This picture was taken before the quarantine.

Making the Most...HLS Juniors Using the Stay at Home order to the fullest

HLS High School students have continued to show diligence and dedication to their studies throughout the stay at home requirements in Indiana. We invite you to read about the junior class and hear about the accomplishments and opportunities for them as they are completing the school year. They didn't miss a beat...just each other. We are proud of them all!

This trimester the junior class at HLS has been studying the third and final section of the 900-page Divine Comedy. Paradiso is the most challenging section of the whole work, and distance learning during our quarantine has added to its challenge. The juniors have "ascended" to the task with the determination they have shown all year! In Economics, the students have been studying important concepts and economic fallacies that all relate back to Henry Hazlitt's lesson in "Economics in One Lesson". In English, the students just finished their last novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz. The essay test asked everyone to assert a thesis regarding the church's responsibility to mankind as the novel ends with mutually assured destruction. Essays required salient quotes for the support of each main argument and needed to include as part of the overall discussion the role of suffering for followers of Christ and at least one major motif developed throughout the novel. Juniors are spending what's left of the year composing an original personal narrative appropriate for the Common Application. When the Common App opens August 1, these juniors will be ready to apply to college!  In rhetoric, the junior class is discussing forensic aka judicial speeches. And in the speech segment, they are wrapping up with impromptu speeches. The goal is to build confidence by practicing a limited preparation speech and to utilize the delivery tools they have learned to keep the speech interesting and engaging. Wrapping up with anatomy and physiology, the students are discussing the male/female reproductive systems and will have a guest speaker next week in class to discuss careers in medicine! These students have not backed down from the challenge of doing school over Zoom and are finishing up their year strong.