Student-created responses to individually chosen works.

1. Personal Anthology
Honors English 12
Kiel
SSHS
Fall 2014

2. • Determine a theme or motif that you believe
appropriately represents a crucial part of
your personality or belief system. This theme
will be used as the basis for your personal
anthology.
• By the scheduled due dates, you should
locate items written/designed by
global/British writers/composers/artists from
any of the various backgrounds of your
choosing that you determine properly depict
this theme.

3. • Include a copy of these items in your anthology and
follow up each with a defense/response which
includes
– An explanation of how the work is linked to your
theme and why you chose it
– An emphasis on any particular line/section that
you feel speak to you personally
– That part of your own individualized experience or
personal philosophy that responds most
profoundly to the piece.
– *This reflection should constitute the greater part
of your response and should provide names (even
if changed), places, dates, detailed descriptions,
enough specifics that the reader feels s/he is there
and participating.

4. • For example, if you’ve chosen justice as your
theme, you may decide to use an excerpt from
Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, when he decides to
defy social conscience and obey his own personal
conscience, thus realizing a higher level of justice.
• Your defense or commentary on this piece should
explain its connection with or influence on your
own concept of justice. This is a suitable point to
include significant quotations (“ ‘Alright then, I’ll
go to hell’”) and any personal experiences that
have caused you to test this concept. Note: your
inclusion of your own personal experiences and
thinking in relation to this selection is crucial in
making this a PERSONAL anthology.

5. • Also, you are invited to include items of
your own creation which follow the same
guidelines (should clearly be linked to
your central theme and should have a
similar type response/defense attached).
• Those items stemming from your own
creative process may fall in the genre of
your choice (essay, photograph, poem,
etc.) This item or an appropriate
representation of it must fit in your
anthology.

6. Items to include
• Poems
• Essays
• Songs
• Short Stories
• Artwork
• Quotations
• Novel Excerpts
• Items of special interest

7. Possible themes
• Adventure
• Chance
• Change
• Competition
• Conflict
• Connections
• Tradition
• Courage
• Creation
• Destruction
• Discovery
• Families
• Fate
• Frontiers

8. Design
• The anthology should be neatly and
securely bound and should include
– Cover
– Title page
– Dedication
– Table of Contents
– Defense/response accompanying each text or
artwork
– MLA-formatted bibliography

9. Cover Designs

26. DEDICATION

29. Introduction

30. THEME
CHOICE
CATEGORIES

32. COVER
DESIGN

43. Web Page
Last, First. “Article Title.” Web Page Title.
Publisher. Date Published. Web. Date
Accessed. <url>.
Kiel, Pam. “The History of Pop-up Books.”
A View to a Kiel. 4 March 2010. Web. 2 Dec.
2013 <www.aviewtoakiel.com>.

44. Artwork from the Web
• Artist’s last name, first name. “Title of
work.” Medium of work. Webpage title.
Publisher. Date published. Web. Date
accessed.
• Picasso. “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.“
Painting. Google images. August 2004.
Web. 12 December 2013.

45. Special Interest Item

47. Answers to most commonly asked
questions
• Put title, artist/writer/composer at the beginning
of each entry. Label the response page according
to avoid confusion with the entry itself.
• No anonymous writers or artists
• An entry can reflect the opposite viewpoint of
your theme and still work for you as an example
of the battle you’ve faced with this topic
• Your table of contents should reflect not only the
page number of your works, but their responses as
well.

48. Literature, as in most art, allows us to lose and find ourselves at the same
time.
I ask students to indicate 3 response that they would definitely life for me to
read as I grade the Personal Anthology. Any other items I read are chosen at
random.
I do not ask for a conclusion, because what we have started here is a record of
growth and change, a door flung open to launch this journey into the self. To
conclude it suggests an end to the journey. This is a time when “closure” is a
concept to avoid.
Here is a project that evolves beyond the concept of “assignment,” that
attaches itself to the life of the writer and hitches a ride. There is no higher
praise I can offer a student than to recognize this transcendence, this
willingness to find his or her own voice, to share the intimate, to take
possession of the literature or the art and make it a part of one’s own makeup.
This is a project that links the cognitive and affective domains and reminds us
that any discipline or human effort that does not bring us back to the humane
part of ourselves has missed the point.