Welcome to Mr. Miller's page.

I teach Honors English 9; Film Analysis; Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy Literature & Media; Creative Writing; and AP Research. 

 

Honors English 9 is essentially a prep course for AP English offered in subsequent years, including AP Language and AP Literature. We work to develop critical thinking and inquiry and the ability to analyze, evaluate, and synthesize multiple perspectives in order to form and support an individual perspective in a self-directed, autonomous way.  

 

Film Analysis covers a short history of film from ancient times to the advent of synchronized sound, but is mainly focused on developing the vocabulary and skill set necessary to analyze the major aspects of film making: mise-en-scene, lighting, cinematography, editing, and sound. Students work to analyze how each of these aspects help tell the story of the film by connecting some specific element of these aspects to a storytelling element, such as characterization, conflict, juxtaposition, or theme, etc. 

 

Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy Literature & Media is a College in High School course that asks students to explore the answers to four essential questions: what is the genre? why do we as humans create the genre? why do we as humans consume the genre? and what does the creation and consumption of these genres say about what it means to be human? The course engages in three major, recurring assessments: Socratic seminar, research and presentation, and analytical essay. Students are taught critical literary and film theory and are asked to synthesize two or more of these theories with their own original ideas about the genre they develop through seminar and research in their series of essays. 

 

Creative Writing is a course that works to develop the skills of a creative writer: the creation of character, setting, conflict, irony, and theme that follows a protagonist through a basic plot structure on his or her way toward dynamic change.These skills are applied to both the analysis and the creation of short stories and pieces of creative nonfiction. Working daily in a writer's notebook, students explore the various ways in which published authors work to create the worlds of their stories, the people in them, and the places within which they occur.

 

AP Research is a College Board class that asks students to develop a research question that fills a gap in the existing field of study, design and implement a replicable method of gathering data, gather and analyze that data, come to reasonable conclusions as a result of the data analysis, and consider future directions for the research. Students produce a 4,000 - 5,000 word paper along with a 15 - 20 minute presentation, which includes an oral defense against a panel of teachers and administrators. This course develops real world research skills as opposed to synthesis research, on which most other high school classes focus. The students are the researchers and become the experts on the specific gap they are filling in the field, rather than being observers or examiners of others' research.