Concord High students bond over shared love of learning in quarantine literature course - Concord Monitor

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Concord High students bond over shared love of learning in quarantine literature course - Concord Monitor Posted: 07 May 2020 01:44 PM PDT Lately, Niyanta Nepal is spending a lot of time reading on the deck of her home in Concord. With her busy schedule as president of the junior class, reading for fun isn't normally something she has much time for. But now that she's learning from home, Nepal finds herself immersed in the world of classic literature. Nepal is part of a course with six other juniors run by Concord Interim Superintendent, Frank Bass, on James Joyce's "Dubliners" and William Faulkner's short stories. It's a new remote learning course students have chosen to take in addition to their regular course load. They aren't getting grades for it – and Bass isn't getting paid to teach the class – it's more about the shared enjoyment of learning and reading, Nepal said. Bass said if he was going to ask teachers in his district to get on board with remote learning, he wanted to have the experience teach ing online as well. Twice a week, the  class meets over the GoogleMeets video platform and debate themes and questions they've picked out of the famous works. "It's a cool opportunity to challenge myself with books or stories that are outside what I'm used to," Nepal said, after a morning reading out in the sun. During this time of remote learning, students are finding unique ways to stay engaged with their community. Junior Nick Richards said the class was born from a conversation he had with Bass a short while into the transition to the stay-at-home order. "We talked about how, with the online learning that we were transitioning to, you could be more independent, more scheduled around yourself," Richards said. "That's really where the idea stemmed from of this independent class – a group of people who were really willing to learn." Like Nepal, Richards is usually busy with extracurriculars outside of school, like the Concord High track team. He's also a gifted student, especially with numbers – Richards recently found out during stay-at-home order that he won fourth place nationally at the economics Investwrite Essay Competition. But Bass's course has given Richards the opportunity to grow as a student and try something new. This course is unlike anything he's taken at Concord High so far. It's similar to the types of courses he's looking forward to taking in college, he said. "That's probably due to the small class size and the fact that it is set up as a seminar," he said. "It's like a college course with how it's structured in that you really need to do your own reading and research and come to class ready to discuss. There's a freedom to it that you don't get in your normal classes." The class started by reading the first three stories in Joyce's Dubliners together – The Sisters, An Encounter, Araby – and the last story, The Dead. Then, each member of the class picked one story of their choice to read and present to the class. Nepal said the challenge of presenting one of Joyce's works– she picked A Little Cloud, her favorite of all the stories by Joyce she read – was enjoyable for her. "It teaches us how to formulate our own opinions, which is different from other classes where you're kind of expected to fit a mold," she said. "This is very flexible in terms of what you're sharing, the ideas you're generating." "All of these kids are doing this voluntarily, and they're taking it on as an extra course, so they obviously all enjoy the material that we are learning," she added. During a recent class, Bass complimented the essays the class turned in on the Dubliners. "You want to be able to find your voice, that's really important," he said. "You're not just tagging words together, there's a voice there's a certain personality coming through the paper, and I really saw that loud and clear with some of these." Bass said he's been impressed by the quality of the work students are putting in, even though they aren't getting graded. During one class, his video streaming stopped working and he wasn't able to log back into the discussion. The students continued discussing the reading without him. Bass said he's been so impressed, he's told each student he'll write them a personalized college recommendation when the class is over. "There is no grade here, there is no GPA there is no class rank. This means absolutely nothing other than shared enjoyment of reading these stories," Bass said. "Yet, all of the students are doing a sensational job."

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