American Literature: Making a Mountain Out of a Molehill

An interdisciplinary course in American Literature was offered to a number of higher-achieving students in the high school department at the California School for the Deaf-Fremont. The course presented a comprehensive survey of American literature in a historical context. Subject areas were identified and integrated with literary selections of five historical periods, and supplemental activities were designed to highlight the cross-disciplinary nature of the class. Skills in research, critical thinking, expression of ideas and opinions, and group interaction were emphasized. The course was designed with a team-approach; two language-reading teachers were responsible for its content. Students in the course were called upon to recognize relationships and patterns, to assimilate new elements into those patterns, and to understand discontinuities when they arose.