During On the week of April 6, all seniors in an Advanced Literary Topics (ALT) class submitted a 12-15 page paper. ALT is a core part of the senior experience for those who choose it. It requires serious work ethic, determination, and vigor to push through the detailed process of creating it. Students have different opinions on the ALT essay paper process.
“I got to write a paper on growing up, which kind of correlates to right now, since we’re coming out of high school. So it was kind of fun,” Mikey Gutchewsky ‘26, ALT Exploration student, said. “The seniors last year talked about how it was a whole lot of work, but I figured if you just kind of did what they told you to do, it really wasn’t that bad.”
The process was more difficult for some who were accustomed to more traditional ways of writing essays.
“It didn’t make sense what the little assignments were doing. Even as I was writing the paper, it still didn’t reconnect at all” Catherine Dawson ‘26, ALT Journalism student, said. “I understood analyzing the book that we had to read, but then having our own argument, then also having to analyze other sources with a rhetorical analysis; it just didn’t really connect in the way that we usually write essays.”
“I felt it was a little bit rushed, but then I came to understand that it was a really good decision,” Isabelle Cox-Garleanu ‘26, ALT Creativity student, said. “I would do it all over again,” she said. “Genuinely, I thought it was a very interesting course. I would totally take another course that’s very similar, and that only focuses on one book and an essay.”
It seems that, like Cox-Garleanu, some seniors throughout the years have also come to appreciate the class.
“I’ve had students come up and be like ‘I didn’t think I could do it, and now I know I can. And so that makes me confident for college,’” Tex Tourais, Dean of Digital Learning and ALT Adaptations teacher, said. “English courses are a joke in freshman year” is what one of Tourais’ former old ALT students remarked after entering college.
Other teachers said sais they believe in the value of the ALT Essay.
“Our world values generalists and we also value specialists. You know, but so often we think that specialists need to only exist in finance or something along those lines. And I think that’s ridiculous. I think the skills that exist in ALT extend to so many different things” Celeste Prince, ALT Exploration teacher, said.
Students also have their own opinions about the utility of the ALT class.
However, the ALT process has not always looked the way it does today. Before ALT, there was “The Author Project:” a junior year class from 2007-2008. According to Lynn Mittler, English Department Chair, The Author Project was a class in which students contacted an author of a book they’ve read in order to uncover whether the students’ analysis and theories about the book were what the author intended.
“ALT became ALT in 2012-2013,” Tourais said. In the first couple years it ran, the paper would be due the last day of classes. “This was just a nightmare because, obviously, you know how seniors operate. And so, teachers were running around finding these kids on the last day of school who were hiding, and kids would fail the thing, and they wouldn’t have any chance to recover. So then, they just wouldn’t get their diplomas.”
So, the English department came together to revise the steps in writing the ALT paper to make sure they were creating abundant opportunities for students to be successful.
“We wanted everything to touch. Like, we didn’t want anything to feel like busy work” Prince explained.
Both Tourais and Prince mentioned having to make drastic changes to the structure and wording of each step so students wouldn’t get as overwhelmed and could process what they were doing better. One of the steps the department decided to revise was the “Pitch.” This is when students explain to the class different paths that they could take in creating their paper. Mittler also played a key role in making things more digestible for students, such as renaming the feedback process to “Evolve” so the objective of this step was more clear. Mittler is a Global Action Project (GAP) teacher, which is the other English class option for seniors, and this course closely follows the “design thinking process.” This official framework was folded into the ALT process to incorporate more innovation and creativity into students’ thinking process.
“I want to see you struggle through the writing and figure out what your voice is,” Prince said.
