Following former Branson English teacher Evan Schnair’s departure in early August to lead the English department at Tesselations, an elementary school in Cupertino, a large portion of the Junior and Senior classes were placed in a class focused on “Moby Dick,” the quintessential American novel. 

Despite the short notice for its creation, the class has been a success.

“Students are really lifting each other up and encouraging one another and sharing their insights, and that, to me, is like the beauty of what an English class can be, especially in an upper level English class like this” said “Moby Dick” teacher Paul Buckley.

Buckley was inspired to teach the class after reminiscing on his own experience with the book when he was a high-schooler.“I went to a high school like Branson, and we had, you know, junior and senior English electives. I read ‘Moby Dick’ when I was a junior in high school, and it was transformative for me,” said Buckley.

The “Moby Dick” course is a part of the English department’s larger strategy to transition to classes focused on a singular, longer book, rather than a variety of novels. This change was based on an article in The Atlantic that described how students at prestigious universities were unable to finish one singular novel.

“We wanted to try this experiment to see if we could help students sustain attention across a big book or a single author study throughout a semester,” said “Moby Dick” teacher and English Department Chair Alanna Hickey.

The fact that there was no summer reading for the class has meant that the teachers and students are reading it together.

“I’m reading it along with the students, and I think that it’s a shared experience for all of us. Excuse the pun: It feels like we’re on the same boat, right? It feels like we’re all on this journey together,” said Buckley.