Skip to Main Content

Section 1: Overview

Perspectives on What It Means to Live a Life Well-Lived

We will begin to examine the Central Question: What does it mean to live a life well-lived? To do so, we will first examine ideas about success, living well, and virtue, and then study a poet’s suggestion about what it means “to be of use.” Through a graduation speech and a poem, we will explore and discuss the human quality of kindness, why it is important, and how it is developed. We will then consider the impact of natural encounters on people through a poem and the essay “Living Like Weasels.” We will conclude our preliminary reading by examining a famous and puzzling poem, Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” as we contemplate the choices and decisions people make in their lives. As we do so, we will learn how a text’s language and tone are keys to understanding its perspective and how to use graphic organizers as we refine our skills in responding to text-based questions. At the end of this section, we will demonstrate our developing understanding and skills by writing a summary of a text we have found meaningful and then responding to that text through a personal reflection, essay, or narrative.

  • Lesson 1:

    We will introduce the Central Questions for this unit and consider this question in light of quotations from authors we will read in the unit about life, virtue, and guiding compasses. In this context, we will preview what we will learn, read, and do as we move toward writing a reflective narrative about our lives and the compasses we might carry.

  • Lesson 2:

    How might you be of use to others and yourself? We will contemplate and discuss this question as we examine a poem by Marge Piercy, “To Be of Use.” We will learn how questioning a text can help us understand it, and we will learn how to respond to text-specific questions thoughtfully and completely. We will consider how being of use might influence our own paths in “living a life well-lived.”

  • Lesson 3:

    How might you follow your heart and intuition? We will examine the structure and ideas of a 2005 commencement speech presented by Steve Jobs to graduates of Stanford University. We will use a question set to analyze the speech and its use of three stories from Jobs’s life to deliver its message, and then we will consider whether that message might serve as a compass for us as we think about how to live a life well-lived.

  • Lesson 4:

    How might you avoid failures of kindness in your life? We will examine a speech by noted author George Saunders, “Advice to Graduates,” using a question set to determine its meaning and the ways it frames that meaning through a personal story. We will then write a short personal narrative about regrets we have in our lives so far and how a regret might also become a guiding compass, like the virtues of kindness and empathy as presented in Saunders’s speech.

  • Lesson 5:

    How might you understand, develop, and apply virtues like kindness? We will examine a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye that presents a contrasting perspective on the virtue of kindness. We will study that perspective and the poet’s voice, as well as the use of imagery and juxtaposition in the poem. We will learn to use a new tool to evaluate the ideas in the poem, and we will write a personal narrative that expresses our own views on kindness.

  • Lesson 6:

    How might you discover the freedom of necessity in your life? We will explore this question through reading, discussion, and critical analysis of Annie Dillard’s essay “Living Like Weasels.” As we study the imagery and metaphorical meaning in this personal essay, we will also learn about the nature of claims—those made directly and implicitly by an author and those we might form about a literary work.

  • Lesson 7:

    We will present our expert team responses to the narrative essay “Living Like Weasels” in a jigsaw discussion. Then we will compare the ideas in the essay to those in the poem “Sojourns in a Parallel World” and develop a concluding claim about the meaning of the essay.

  • Lesson 8:

    How might you choose which roads to follow in your life? We will consider the impact of decisions and choices we might make in life, by examining a famous (and perhaps puzzling) poem by Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken.” We will examine the claims inherently made by Frost within the poem and form our own claims about its meaning.

  • Lesson 9:

    We will prepare to write a reflective interpretation and personal response for the Section Diagnostic by reviewing the task, selecting a text to focus on, summarizing that text’s meaning, and planning a personal response related to the meaning of the text we selected.

  • Lesson 10:

    We will develop a short personal reflection, essay, or narrative while considering the second Central Question: What compass might you carry as you undertake your journey in the world?

  • Lesson 11:

    We will review feedback on the Section Diagnostic. We will use the feedback to make revisions to our work.

  • Lesson 12:

    We will commence an Independent Reading Program in which we choose texts to read independently as we progress through the unit. We will learn how to choose texts, what activities we may complete, about the final task, and about any materials we will use as we read our independent reading texts. We will begin by reading our texts, using tools to help us take notes and analyze important textual elements.