The Library In the Margin
Opens January 2027

The spring term carries the year’s question into a forest where nothing is what it seems — fifteen weeks among lovers and fairies, asking what the night knows about love, illusion, and waking.

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Part of The Art of Attention — the high-school literature year.
A full feast
Literature · Language Arts · Nature Study · Art, Music & Poetry
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The Shape of the Term
Fifteen weeks in the wood
The play, act by act
We read A Midsummer Night’s Dream slowly, dive deep into its great speeches, memorize and record a soliloquy, and watch it performed.
A home novel alongside
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or Till We Have Faces — asking the same things about love, illusion, and waking.
Three culminating weeks
A Great Conversation seminar, an in-class composition, and the spring squares of the Quilt.
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The Threads We Keep
Practices that run all term
  • NarrationTelling back what we’ve read, faithfully, before we analyze it.
  • Commonplace Journalthe Book of Attentions — the lines a student stops to notice and chooses to keep.
  • Copywork & The Lively Art of WritingDeveloping real writing skill — the hand and the ear, trained together.
  • A recorded soliloquyOne speech memorized and spoken aloud.
  • The Relation StudiesThe “riches” — where the thread a student is following becomes tangible. They might even find a craft they love.
  • The weekly Habit of AttentionA quotation to sit with and one small practice for the week.
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The Capstone
Follow the Thread
Follow one thread all the way through.
Each student follows a single thread across the term — a character who won’t let go, perhaps a fairy queen, or a question they can’t put down — and carries it through five pieces. The last, a painted square, joins the others on the Great Conversation Quilt: a quilt of a season’s attention.
A Relation Study A letter — a character or great thinker’s voice A thesis An imitation passage A watercolor square · the Quilt
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The Honors Path

An honors strand runs through every week, marked in the term’s color — an invitation, not a requirement. A few of the ways it might look this term:

  • ✦ An extra passage each week — a speech from another Shakespeare play set beside this one.
  • ✦ An independent close reading of one of the play’s great soliloquies.
  • ✦ An extended composition bringing a third text into the argument — the play, the home novel, and one more voice on love and illusion.

And it all gathers into a portfolio at the end — a record of the work a student can carry into college applications.

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